Smashing Nuclei: Quark–Gluon Plasma and the Early Universe

Ultra-relativistic collisions of heavy nuclei at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) provide unique conditions for studying strongly interacting matter under extreme temperatures and densities. In such collisions, nucleons dissolve into their fundamental constituents, forming a quark–gluon plasma (QGP) reminiscent of the universe a few microseconds after the Big Bang.

The groundwork for the existence of QGP was laid about 50 years ago, soon after the discovery of asymptotic freedom in QCD in 1973. Seminal publications by Collins and Perry and by Cabibbo and Parisi in 1975, along with discussions at the Bear Mountain workshop in December 1974, established the foundation for a global effort that led to major experimental programs at BNL and CERN.
In this presentation, we will trace the history of QGP studies, discuss how the ALICE experiment at the LHC and the STAR experiment at RHIC recreate this primordial matter, review some of the key results, and outline the future experimental program.

Speaker: Tapan Kumar Nayak

When: 28^th October at 16:00

Where: Aula Multimediale