Heavy ion collisions: The big picture and the big questions

Wit Busza, Krishna Rajagopal, Wilke Van Der Schee

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

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 ion collisions 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 various ways allows us to study the properties of QGP and the complex dynamics of multiscale processes in QCD that 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 are encountered.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)339-376
Number of pages38
JournalAnnual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science
Volume68
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Oct 2018

Funding

We are pleased to acknowledge helpful comments from Gian Michele Innocenti, Guilherme Milhano, Greg Ridgway, Raju Venugopalan, Jing Wang, Ryan Weller, and Bill Zajc. The writing of this review was supported by the US Department of Energy under contract number DESC0011090. W.S. is supported by VENI grant 680-47-458 from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

Keywords

  • heavy ion collisions
  • jets
  • multiparticle production
  • quark-gluon plasma
  • relativistic hydrodynamics

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