Strongly Interacting Matter Under Rotation: An Introduction

Abstract

Ultrarelativistic collisions between heavy nuclei briefly generate the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a new state of matter characterized by deconfined partons last seen microseconds after the Big Bang. The properties of the QGP are of intense interest, and a large community has developed over several decades, to produce, measure and understand this primordial plasma. The plasma is now recognized to be a strongly-coupled fluid with remarkable properties, and hydrodynamics is commonly used to quantify and model the system. An important feature of any fluid is its vorticity, related to the local angular momentum density; however, this degree of freedom has received relatively little attention because no experimental signals of vorticity had been detected. Thanks to recent high-statistics datasets from experiments with precision tracking and complete kinemetic coverage at collider energies, hyperon spin polarization measurements have begun to uncover the vorticity of the QGP created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The injection of this new degree of freedom into a relatively mature field of research represents an enormous opportunity to generate new insights into the physics of the QGP. The community has responded with enthusiasm, and this book (to be published as a volume of Lecture Notes in Physics series by Springer) represents some of the diverse lines of inquiry into aspects of strongly interacting matter under rotation.

arXiv commentThis is the introductory chapter of "Strongly Interacting Matter Under Rotation," a volume of Lecture Notes in Physics to be published by Springer and edited by Becattini, Liao, and Lisa. It briefly summarizes the topic and introduces the subsequent 11 chapters, written by experts from the community

References in corpus (20)

• 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
• Quark Gluon Plasma an Color Glass Condensate at RHIC? The perspective from the BRAHMS experiment
• The PHOBOS Perspective on Discoveries at RHIC
• Global $\Lambda$ hyperon polarization in nuclear collisions: evidence for the most vortical fluid
• The STAR Time Projection Chamber: A Unique Tool for Studying High Multiplicity Events at RHIC
• Globally Polarized Quark-gluon Plasma in Non-central A+A Collisions
• Mapping the Phases of Quantum Chromodynamics with Beam Energy Scan
• Angular momentum conservation in heavy ion collisions at very high energy
• Relativistic distribution function for particles with spin at local thermodynamical equilibrium
• Global hyperon polarization at local thermodynamic equilibrium with vorticity, magnetic field and feed-down
• Spin Alignment of Vector Mesons in Non-central A+A Collisions
• Polarization of $\Lambda$ ($\bar{\Lambda }$) hyperons along the beam direction in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}$ = 200 GeV
• Polarization and Vorticity in the Quark Gluon Plasma
• Vortical fluid and $\Lambda$ spin correlations in high-energy heavy-ion collisions
• Evidence of spin-orbital angular momentum interactions in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• What can we learn from global spin alignment of $\varphi$ meson in heavy-ion collisions?
• The Chiral Magnetic Effect and an experimental bound on the late time magnetic field strength
• The STAR Event Plane Detector
• Spin Hydrodynamic Generation in the Charged Subatomic Swirl

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Spin polarization dynamics in the non-boost-invariant background
• Drag force and heavy quark potential in a rotating background
• Collective dynamics of polarized spin-half fermions in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Electromagnetic radiation at extreme angular velocity
• Polarization of spin-1/2 particles with effective spacetime dependent masses
• Vortical waves in a quantum fluid with vector, axial, and helical charges. I. Non-dissipative transport