scholarly journals A critical review of RHIC experimental results

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (08) ◽  
pp. 1430011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Trainor

The relativistic heavy-ion collider (RHIC) was constructed to achieve an asymptotic state of nuclear matter in heavy-ion collisions, a near-ideal gas of deconfined quarks and gluons denoted quark–gluon plasma or QGP. RHIC collisions are indeed very different from the hadronic processes observed at the Bevalac and AGS, but high-energy elementary-collision mechanisms are also non-hadronic. The two-component model (TCM) combines measured properties of elementary collisions with the Glauber eikonal model to provide an alternative asymptotic limit for A–A collisions. RHIC data have been interpreted to indicate formation of a strongly-coupled QGP (sQGP) or "perfect liquid". In this review, I consider the experimental evidence that seems to support such conclusions and alternative evidence that may conflict with those conclusions and suggest different interpretations.

Author(s):  
Debasish Das

A strongly coupled Quark–Gluon Plasma (sQGP) is created in the high-energy heavy-ion collisions at Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) and Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Our present understanding of sQGP as a very good liquid with astonishingly low viscosity is reviewed. With the arrival of the interesting results from LHC in high-energy [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], a new endeavor to characterize the transition from these small systems to heavy ions [Formula: see text] is now in place, since even the small systems showed prominent similarities to heavy ions in the rising multiplicity domains. An outlook of future possibilities for better measurements is also made at the end of this brief review.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li-Na Gao ◽  
Fu-Hu Liu

We propose a new revised Landau hydrodynamic model to study systematically the pseudorapidity distributions of charged particles produced in heavy ion collisions over an energy range from a few GeV to a few TeV per nucleon pair. The interacting system is divided into three sources, namely, the central, target, and projectile sources, respectively. The large central source is described by the Landau hydrodynamic model and further revised by the contributions of the small target/projectile sources. The modeling results are in agreement with the available experimental data at relativistic heavy ion collider, large hadron collider, and other energies for different centralities. The value of square speed of sound parameter in different collisions has been extracted by us from the widths of rapidity distributions. Our results show that, in heavy ion collisions at energies of the two colliders, the central source undergoes a phase transition from hadronic gas to quark-gluon plasma liquid phase; meanwhile, the target/projectile sources remain in the state of hadronic gas. The present work confirms that the quark-gluon plasma is of liquid type rather than being of a gas type.


2018 ◽  
Vol 172 ◽  
pp. 05010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Nattrass

The Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) is created in high energy heavy ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This medium is transparent to electromagnetic probes but nearly opaque to colored probes. Hard partons produced early in the collision fragment and hadronize into a collimated spray of particles called a jet. The partons lose energy as they traverse the medium, a process called jet quenching. Most of the lost energy is still correlated with the parent parton, contributing to particle production at larger angles and lower momenta relative to the parent parton than in proton-proton collisions. This partonic energy loss can be measured through several observables, each of which give different insights into the degree and mechanism of energy loss. The measurements to date are summarized and the path forward is discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Niida ◽  
Y. Miake

AbstractThe progress over the 30 years since the first high-energy heavy-ion collisions at the BNL-AGS and CERN-SPS has been truly remarkable. Rigorous experimental and theoretical studies have revealed a new state of the matter in heavy-ion collisions, the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Many signatures supporting the formation of the QGP have been reported. Among them are jet quenching, the non-viscous flow, direct photons, and Debye screening effects. In this article, selected signatures of the QGP observed at RHIC and the LHC are reviewed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 80 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Chen ◽  
Shu-Yi Wei ◽  
Han-Zhong Zhang

AbstractDifferent types of high energy hard probes are used to extract the jet transport properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma created in heavy-ion collisions, of which the heavy boson tagged jets are undoubtedly the most sophisticated due to its clean decay signature and production mechanism. In this study, we used the resummation improved pQCD approach with high order correction in the hard factor to calculate the momentum ratio $$x_J$$ x J distributions of Z and Higgs (H) tagged jets. We found that the formalism can provide a good description of the 5.02 TeV pp data. Using the BDMPS energy loss formalism, along with the OSU 2 + 1D hydro to simulate the effect of the medium, we extracted the value of the jet transport coefficient to be around $${\hat{q}}_0=4\sim 8~\text {GeV}^2/\text {fm}$$ q ^ 0 = 4 ∼ 8 GeV 2 / fm by comparing with the Z + jet PbPb experimental data. The H + jet $$x_J$$ x J distribution were calculated in a similar manner in contrast and found to have a stronger Sudakov effect as compared with the Z + jet distribution. This study uses a clean color-neutral boson as trigger to study the jet quenching effect and serves as a complimentary method in the extraction of the QGP’s transport coefficient in high energy nuclear collisions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (27) ◽  
pp. 1330043 ◽  
Author(s):  
HELMUT SATZ

The ultimate aim of high energy heavy ion collisions is to study quark deconfinement and the quark–gluon plasma predicted by quantum chromodynamics. This requires the identification of observables calculable in QCD and measurable in heavy ion collisions. I concentrate on three such phenomena, related to specific features of strongly interacting matter. The observed pattern of hadrosynthesis corresponds to that of an ideal resonance gas in equilibrium at the pseudo-critical temperature determined in QCD. The critical behavior of QCD is encoded in the fluctuation patterns of conserved quantum numbers, which are presently being measured. The temperature of the quark–gluon plasma can be determined by the dissociation patterns of the different quarkonium states, now under study at the LHC for both charmonia and bottomonia.


2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 293-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Li ◽  
Gang Wang

The interplay of quantum anomalies with strong magnetic fields and vorticity in chiral systems could lead to novel transport phenomena, such as the chiral magnetic effect (CME), the chiral magnetic wave (CMW), and the chiral vortical effect (CVE). In high-energy nuclear collisions, these chiral effects may survive the expansion of a quark–gluon plasma fireball and be detected in experiments. The experimental searches for the CME, the CMW, and the CVE have aroused extensive interest over the past couple of decades. The main goal of this article is to review the latest experimental progress in the search for these novel chiral transport phenomena at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Future programs to help reduce uncertainties and facilitate the interpretation of the data are also discussed.


2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (03) ◽  
pp. 643-659 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN W. HARRIS

This presentation is given in honor of Walter Greiner's 70th birthday, in recognition of the pioneering work of his "Frankfurt School" and their contributions to the field of heavy ion physics. Ultra-relativistic collisions of heavy nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) form an extremely hot system at energy densities greater than 5 GeV/fm3, where normal hadrons cannot exist. Upon rapid cooling of the system to a temperature T ~ 175 MeV and vanishingly small baryo-chemical potential, hadrons coalesce from quarks at the quark-hadron phase boundary predicted by lattice QCD. A large amount of collective (elliptic) flow at the quark level provides evidence for strong pressure gradients in the initial partonic stage of the collision when the system is dense and highly interacting prior to coalescence into hadrons. The suppression of both light (u,d,s) and heavy (c,b) hadrons at large transverse momenta, that form from fragmentation of hard-scattered partons, and the quenching of di-jets provide evidence for extremely large energy loss of partons as they attempt to propagate through the dense, strongly-coupled, colored medium created at RHIC.


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