Friday, April 5, 2024
11:00 - 12:00
Heavy ion collisions reproduce droplets of the trillions-of-degrees-hot
liquid that filled the microseconds-old universe, called quark-gluon
plasma (QGP). Over the past twenty years, data obtained via recreating
this primordial fluid have shown that it is the most liquid liquid in
the universe, making it the first complex matter to form as well as the
source of all protons and neutrons. After a look at what we have learned
about the formation and properties of this original liquid from heavy
ion collisions, I will focus on the road ahead. I will frame motivating
questions, including: How does liquid QGP change as it is doped with an
excess of quarks over antiquarks? Is there a critical point in the
region of the QCD phase diagram as a function of temperature and doping
that heavy ion collisions can explore? How does a strongly coupled
liquid emerge, given that what you will see if you can probe QGP with
high resolution is weakly coupled quarks and gluons? How can we use jets
to see the inner workings of QGP and answer this question?
Nikhef
Nikhef
Nikhef Colloquium room
Colloquium
cosmology, gravitational and astroparticle physics, high energy physics
Krishna Rajagopal (MIT)