The Fluid Nature of Quark-Gluon Plasma
arXiv:0802.3552 · doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2008.02.285
Abstract
Collisions of heavy nuclei at very high energies offer the exciting possibility of experimentally exploring the phase transformation from hadronic to partonic degrees of freedom which is predicted to occur at several times normal nuclear density and/or for temperatures in excess of MeV. Such a state, often referred to as a quark-gluon plasma, is thought to have been the dominant form of matter in the universe in the first few microseconds after the Big Bang. Data from the first five years of heavy ion collisions of Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) clearly demonstrate that these very high temperatures and densities have been achieved. While there are strong suggestions of the role of quark degrees of freedom in determining the final-state distributions of the produced matter, there is also compelling evidence that the matter does {\em not} behave as a quasi-ideal state of free quarks and gluons. Rather, its behavior is that of a dense fluid with very low kinematic viscosity exhibiting strong hydrodynamic flow and nearly complete absorption of high momentum probes. The current status of the RHIC experimental studies is presented, with a special emphasis on the fluid properties of the created matter, which may in fact be the most perfect fluid ever studied in the laboratory.
arXiv comment12 pages, 5 figures; to appear in Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Nuclear Physics; version posted as submitted on 27-Sep-07
References in corpus (83)
- Experimental and Theoretical Challenges in the Search for the Quark Gluon Plasma: The STAR Collaboration's Critical Assessment of the Evidence from RHIC Collisions
- Formation of dense partonic matter in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC: Experimental evaluation by the PHENIX collaboration
- Viscosity in Strongly Interacting Quantum Field Theories from Black Hole Physics
- Quark Gluon Plasma an Color Glass Condensate at RHIC? The perspective from the BRAHMS experiment
- The PHOBOS Perspective on Discoveries at RHIC
- Shear viscosity of strongly coupled N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma
- Signatures of the Tricritical Point in QCD
- Radiative energy loss of high energy quarks and gluons in a finite volume quark-gluon plasma
- Suppression of Hadrons with Large Transverse Momentum in Central Au+Au Collisions at $sqrt {s sub {sub {NN}}}_ = 130 GeV
- Hadron production in central nucleus-nucleus collisions at chemical freeze-out
- Reaction Operator Approach to Non-Abelian Energy Loss
- Transverse momentum and collision energy dependence of high hadron suppression in Au+Au collisions at ultrarelativistic energies
- Hadronization in heavy ion collisions: Recombination and fragmentation of partons
- Disappearance of back-to-back high hadron correlations in central Au+Au collisions at = 200 GeV
- Parton coalescence and antiproton/pion anomaly at RHIC
- Elliptic flow in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 130 GeV
- Evidence from d+Au measurements for final-state suppression of high hadrons in Au+Au collisions at RHIC
- The Effect of Shear Viscosity on Spectra, Elliptic Flow, and HBT Radii
- Azimuthal anisotropy in Au+Au collisions at sqrtsNN = 200 GeV
- Drag force in AdS/CFT
- Radiative energy loss of high energy quarks in finite-size nuclear matter and quark-gluon plasma
- Hadron production in heavy ion collisions: Fragmentation and recombination from a dense parton phase
- Gluon Radiation off Hard Quarks in a Nuclear Environment: Opacity Expansion
- Energy Loss and Flow of Heavy Quarks in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
- Hadron production in Au-Au collisions at RHIC
- Particle-type dependence of azimuthal anisotropy and nuclear modification of particle production in Au+Au collisions at s(NN)**(1/2) = 200-GeV
- Suppressed pi^0 Production at Large Transverse Momentum in Central Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
- Parton coalescence at RHIC
- Why does the Quark-Gluon Plasma at RHIC behave as a nearly ideal fluid ?
- Collective Flow signals the Quark Gluon Plasma
- On the Strongly-Interacting Low-Viscosity Matter Created in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions
- Absence of Suppression in Particle Production at Large Transverse Momentum in sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV d+Au Collisions
- Suppression of elliptic flow in a minimally viscous quark-gluon plasma
- Manifestations of high density QCD in the first RHIC data
- Scaling properties of azimuthal anisotropy in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
- Transverse Momentum Spectra in Au+Au and d+Au Collisions at =200 GeV and the Pseudorapidity Dependence of High p Suppression
- Quenching of hadron spectra in media
- Scaling behavior at high p_T and the p/pi ratio
- Modifications to Di-Jet Hadron Pair Correlations in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
- Jet Tomography of Hot and Cold Nuclear Matter
- Perfect Fluidity of the Quark Gluon Plasma Core as Seen through its Dissipative Hadronic Corona
- Wilson loops in heavy ion collisions and their calculation in AdS/CFT
- Centrality dependence of pi^[+/-], K^[+/-], p and p-bar production from sqrt(s_NN)=130 GeV Au + Au collisions at RHIC
- Jet Quenching in the Opposite Direction of a Tagged Photon in High-Energy Heavy-Ion Collisions
- Mid-Rapidity Neutral Pion Production in Proton-Proto Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
- Has the QCD Critical Point been Signaled by Observations at RHIC ?
- Charged particle multiplicity near mid-rapidity in central Au+Au collisions at 56 and 130 AGeV
- Centrality Dependence of Charged Particle Multiplicity in Au-Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=130 GeV
- Centrality Dependence of Direct Photon Production in sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV Au+Au Collisions
- Systematic Studies of the Centrality and sqrt(s_NN) Dependence of dE_T/deta and dN_ch/deta in Heavy Ion Collisions at Mid-rapidity
- Centrality dependence of charged hadron transverse momentum spectra in d+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
- Results from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
- Partonic flow and -meson production in Au+Au collisions at = 200 GeV
- The centrality dependence of elliptic flow, the hydrodynamic limit, and the viscosity of hot QCD
- Jet Tomography of Au+Au Reactions Including Multi-gluon Fluctuations
- A Dynamical Scaling Law for Jet Tomography
- Multi-strange baryon elliptic flow in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)= 200 GeV
- The onset of classical QCD dynamics in relativistic heavy ion collisions
- Energy Loss of Leading Hadrons and Direct Photon production in Evolving Quark-Gluon Plasma
- Measuring Shear Viscosity Using Transverse Momentum Correlations in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions
- Conical Flow induced by Quenched QCD Jets
- Elliptic flow for phi mesons and (anti)deuterons in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
- Hydrodynamic afterburner for the Color Glass Condensate and the parton energy loss
- Energy dependence of particle multiplicities in central Au+Au collisions
- Centrality Dependence of Thermal Parameters Deduced from Hadron Multiplicities in Au + Au Collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}} = 130 GeV
- The Shear Viscosity to Entropy Density Ratio of Trapped Fermions in the Unitarity Limit
- Transverse Expansion and High Azimuthal Asymmetry at RHIC
- Last Call for RHIC Predictions
- Reaction Operator Approach to Multiple Elastic Scatterings
- Discovery of Jet Quenching at RHIC and the Opacity of the Produced Gluon Plasma
- Hard pion and prompt photon at RHIC, from single to double inclusive production
- critRHIC: The RHIC Low Energy Program
- System Size and Energy Dependence of Jet-Induced Hadron Pair Correlation Shapes in Cu+Cu and Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 and 62.4 GeV
- Centrality Dependence of Bulk Fireball Properties at RHIC
- Low- and Intermediate-p Di-hadron Distributions in Au+Au Collisions at GeV from STAR
- Universality of the diffusion wake in the gauge-string duality
- Two Categories of Approximately mu-tau Symmetric Neutrino Mass Textures
- Universal scaling of the elliptic flow data at RHIC
- Universal scaling of the elliptic flow at RHIC
- Heavy Ion Physics at the LHC with the ATLAS Detector
- Heavy-Ion Physics with ALICE
- PHENIX Measurement of High- Hadron-hadron and Photon-hadron Azimuthal Correlations
- Mapping out the Jet correlation landscape: Jet quenching and Medium response
Cited by in corpus (24)
- Acceleration, Energy Loss and Screening in Strongly-Coupled Gauge Theories
- Beam Energy Dependence of the Third Harmonic of Azimuthal Correlations in Au+Au Collisions at RHIC
- Beam Energy Dependence of Jet-Quenching Effects in Au+Au Collisions at = 7.7, 11.5, 14.5, 19.6, 27, 39, and 62.4 GeV
- Inverse Anisotropic Catalysis in Holographic QCD
- Dynamical collisional energy loss and transport properties of on- and off-shell heavy quarks in vacuum and in the Quark Gluon Plasma
- Holographic Lessons for Quark Dynamics
- Exact solutions of relativistic perfect fluid hydrodynamics for a QCD equation of state
- Continuum study on QCD phase diagram through an OPE-modified gluon propagator
- Linearized hydrodynamics from probe-sources in the gauge-string duality
- Early-Time Energy Loss in a Strongly-Coupled SYM Plasma
- Heavy-quark energy loss and thermalization in a strongly coupled SYM plasma
- The Gluonic Field of a Heavy Quark in Conformal Field Theories at Strong Coupling
- Constraining the initial conditions and temperature dependent transport with three-particle correlations in Au+Au collisions
- Away-side asymmetry of jet correlation relative to reaction plane: a sensitive probe for jet in-medium modifications
- Influence of quenched jets on di-hadron correlations
- Toward construction of a consistent field theory with Poincare covariance in terms of step-function-type basis functions showing confinement/deconfinement, mass-gap and Regge trajectory for non-pure/pure non-Abelian gauge fields
- Flow and vorticity with varying chemical potential in relativistic heavy ion collisions
- Gluon matter plasma in the compact star core within fluid QCD model
- Phase Diagram in Quantum Chromodynamics
- Acceleration and Energy Loss in N=4 SYM
- Some Comments on Relativistic Hydrodynamics and Fuzzy Bags
- Bose-Einstein or HBT correlations in high energy reactions
- Theoretical Perspectives: XLIII Rencontres de Moriond - QCD
- Highlights from Heavy Ion Collisions at RHIC and the Acoustics of the Little Bangs