Ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions and the quark-gluon plasma

Abstract

We present an overview of selected aspects of ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions, a research program devoted to the study of strongly interacting matter at high energy densities and in particular to the characterization of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). The basic features of the phase diagram of nuclear matter, as currently understood theoretically, are discussed. The experimental program, carried out over a broad energy domain at various accelerators, is briefly reviewed, with an emphasis on the global characterization of nucleus-nucleus collisions. Two particular aspects are treated in more detail: i) the application of statistical models to a phenomenological description of particle production and the information it provides on the phase diagram; ii) the production of hadrons carrying charm quarks as messengers from the QGP phase.

Based on lectures given by P.Braun-Munzinger at the VIII Hispalensis International Summer School, Oromana (Seville, Spain), June 9-21, 2003 32 pages, 20 figures. A clickable list of references available at http://www-linux.gsi.de/~andronic/qgp/qgp.html

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Cited by in corpus (17)

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• Equilibrium Statistical-Thermal Models in High-Energy Physics
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• Longitudinal fluid dynamics for ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Excitation Functions of Tsallis-like Parameters in High-Energy Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions
• Elliptic Flow: A Study of Space-Momentum Correlations In Relativistic Nuclear Collisions
• Advances in Quark Gluon Plasma
• 1+1 Dimensional Hydrodynamics for High-energy Heavy-ion Collisions
• Freeze-out volume of hot dense fireball
• Possible glueball production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• An energy independent scaling of transverse momentum spectra of direct (prompt) photons from two-body processes in high-energy proton-proton collisions
• Pion entropy and phase-space densities in A+A collisions
• Dynamics of Resonances in Strongly Interacting Systems
• Entropy production and equilibration in Yang-Mills quantum mechanics
• J/Psi suppression, percolation model and the critical energy density in AA collisions at SPS and RHIC energies with the account of centrality
• Microscopic Models of Heavy Ion Interactions