Heavy Ion Collisions: The Big Picture, and the Big Questions

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
العنوان: Heavy Ion Collisions: The Big Picture, and the Big Questions
المؤلفون: Busza, Wit, Rajagopal, Krishna, van der Schee, Wilke
سنة النشر: 2018
المجموعة: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
High Energy Physics - Theory
Nuclear Experiment
Nuclear Theory
مصطلحات موضوعية: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology, High Energy Physics - Theory, Nuclear Experiment, Nuclear Theory
الوصف: Heavy ion collisions quickly form a droplet of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) with a remarkably small viscosity. We give an accessible introduction to how to study this smallest and hottest droplet of liquid made on earth and why it is so interesting. The physics of heavy ions ranges from highly energetic quarks and gluons described by perturbative QCD to a bath of strongly interacting gluons at lower energy scales. These gluons quickly thermalize and form QGP, while the energetic partons traverse this plasma and end in a shower of particles called jets. Analyzing the final particles in a variety of different ways allows us to study the properties of QGP and the complex dynamics of multi-scale processes in QCD which govern its formation and evolution, providing what is perhaps the simplest form of complex quantum matter that we know of. Much remains to be understood, and throughout the review big open questions will be encountered.
Comment: 49 pages, 9 figures. Invited review prepared for Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science 68 (2018)
نوع الوثيقة: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-nucl-101917-020852
URL الوصول: http://arxiv.org/abs/1802.04801
رقم الأكسشن: edsarx.1802.04801
قاعدة البيانات: arXiv
الوصف
DOI:10.1146/annurev-nucl-101917-020852