Challenges in QCD matter physics - The Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment at FAIR

Abstract

Substantial experimental and theoretical efforts worldwide are devoted to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter. At LHC and top RHIC energies, QCD matter is studied at very high temperatures and nearly vanishing net-baryon densities. There is evidence that a Quark-Gluon-Plasma (QGP) was created at experiments at RHIC and LHC. The transition from the QGP back to the hadron gas is found to be a smooth cross over. For larger net-baryon densities and lower temperatures, it is expected that the QCD phase diagram exhibits a rich structure, such as a first-order phase transition between hadronic and partonic matter which terminates in a critical point, or exotic phases like quarkyonic matter. The discovery of these landmarks would be a breakthrough in our understanding of the strong interaction and is therefore in the focus of various high-energy heavy-ion research programs. The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment at FAIR will play a unique role in the exploration of the QCD phase diagram in the region of high net-baryon densities, because it is designed to run at unprecedented interaction rates. High-rate operation is the key prerequisite for high-precision measurements of multi-differential observables and of rare diagnostic probes which are sensitive to the dense phase of the nuclear fireball. The goal of the CBM experiment at SIS100 (sqrt(s_NN) = 2.7 - 4.9 GeV) is to discover fundamental properties of QCD matter: the phase structure at large baryon-chemical potentials (mu_B > 500 MeV), effects of chiral symmetry, and the equation-of-state at high density as it is expected to occur in the core of neutron stars. In this article, we review the motivation for and the physics programme of CBM, including activities before the start of data taking in 2022, in the context of the worldwide efforts to explore high-density QCD matter.

15 pages, 11 figures. Published in European Physical Journal A

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Cited by in corpus (27)

• Critical point in the phase diagram of primordial quark-gluon matter from black hole physics
• All the Fun of the FAIR: Fundamental physics at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research
• Global $\Lambda$ polarization in moderately relativistic nuclear collisions
• Search for the QCD Critical Point in High Energy Nuclear Collisions
• Criticality in a Hadron Resonance Gas model with the van der Waals interaction
• Phase Diagram, Scalar-Pseudoscalar Meson Behavior and Restoration of Symmetries in (2+1) Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinio Model
• Update of the Three-fluid Hydrodynamics-based Event Simulator: light-nuclei production in heavy-ion collisions
• Global $\Lambda$ polarization in heavy-ion collisions at energies 2.4--7.7 GeV: Effect of Meson-Field Interaction
• Commissioning and testing of pre-series triple GEM prototypes for CBM-MuCh in the mCBM experiment at the SIS18 facility of GSI
• Probing dense QCD matter in the laboratory: The CBM experiment at FAIR
• Constraints on the kinetic mixing parameter ${\epsilon }^2$ for the light dark photons from dilepton production in heavy-ion collisions in the few-GeV energy range
• Equilibration and baryon densities attainable in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Status of the Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment at FAIR
• Astrophysics in the Laboratory: The CBM Experiment at FAIR
• Strangeness thermodynamic instabilities in hot and dense nuclear matter
• Hydrodynamic description of the baryon-charged quark-gluon plasma
• Compact star properties from an extended linear sigma model
• Beam energy dependence of cumulants of the net-baryon, net-charge and deuteron multiplicity distributions in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=3.0-5.0$ GeV
• J/$\psi$ yields in low energy nuclear collisions at SPS and FAIR: A baseline estimation
• Anisotropic flow of charged and identified hadrons at FAIR energies and its dependence on the nuclear equation of state
• Kinetic freeze-out temperature and transverse flow velocity in Au-Au collisions at RHIC-BES energies
• Thermal properties of hot and dense medium in interacting hadron resonance gas model
• Jet Quenching in The Most Vortical Fluid: A Holographic Approach
• Interacting quark matter effects on the structure of compact stars
• Effects of Initial Density Fluctuations on Cumulants in Au + Au Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7 GeV
• Hybrid star properties from an extended linear sigma model
• Simultaneous muon and reference hadron measurements in the Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment at FAIR