Matter in extremis: ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions at RHIC

Abstract

We review the physics of nuclear matter at high energy density and the experimental search for the Quark-Gluon Plasma at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The data obtained in the first three years of the RHIC physics program provide several lines of evidence that a novel state of matter has been created in the most violent, head-on collisions of $Au$ nuclei at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV. Jet quenching and global measurements show that the initial energy density of the strongly interacting medium generated in the collision is about two orders of magnitude larger than that of cold nuclear matter, well above the critical density for the deconfinement phase transition predicted by lattice QCD. The observed collective flow patterns imply that the system thermalizes early in its evolution, with the dynamics of its expansion consistent with ideal hydrodynamic flow based on a Quark-Gluon Plasma equation of state.

arXiv comment93 pages, 46 figures; final version for journal incorporating minor changes and corrections

Cited by in corpus (166)

• The PHOBOS Perspective on Discoveries at RHIC
• Glauber Modeling in High Energy Nuclear Collisions
• QCD and strongly coupled gauge theories: challenges and perspectives
• Calculating the Jet Quenching Parameter from AdS/CFT
• Elastic, Inelastic, and Path Length Fluctuations in Jet Tomography
• Determination of nuclear parton distribution functions and their uncertainties at next-to-leading order
• QCD equation of state at nonzero chemical potential: continuum results with physical quark masses at order mu^2
• Wilson loops in heavy ion collisions and their calculation in AdS/CFT
• Direct observation of dijets in central Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
• Effects of initial flow velocity fluctuation in event-by-event (3+1)D hydrodynamics
• A Hybrid Strong/Weak Coupling Approach to Jet Quenching
• Forward inclusive dijet production and azimuthal correlations in pA collisions
• Global quark polarization in non-central $A+A$ collisions
• Towards the determination of heavy-quark transport coefficients in quark-gluon plasma
• How sensitive are high-pt electron spectra at RHIC to heavy quark energy loss?
• Jet quenching and medium response in high-energy heavy-ion collisions: a review
• Influence of Bottom Quark Jet Quenching on Single Electron Tomography of Au+Au
• Transverse Momentum Broadening and the Jet Quenching Parameter, Redux
• Dynamic critical phenomena at a holographic critical point
• Angular Structure of Jet Quenching Within a Hybrid Strong/Weak Coupling Model
• Jet Quenching via Jet Collimation
• Bridging Soft-Hard Transport Properties of Quark-Gluon Plasmas with CUJET3.0
• QCD equation of state at nonzero magnetic fields in the Hadron Resonance Gas model
• Quark Polarization in a Viscous Quark-Gluon Plasma
• Relativistic anisotropic hydrodynamics
• On jet quenching parameters in strongly coupled non-conformal gauge theories
• Dragging Heavy Quarks in Quark Gluon Plasma at the Large Hadron Collider
• Centrality Dependent Particle Production at $y=0$ and $y\sim 1$ in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(sNN)=200GeV
• Low-pT Collective Flow Induces High-pT Jet Quenching
• Consistency of Perfect Fluidity and Jet Quenching in semi-Quark-Gluon Monopole Plasmas
• Pedestal and Peak Structure in Jet Correlation
• Predictions for Boson-Jet Observables and Fragmentation Function Ratios from a Hybrid Strong/Weak Coupling Model for Jet Quenching
• Sonic Mach Cones Induced by Fast Partons in a Perturbative Quark-Gluon Plasma
• The physics of $Z^0/{\gamma }^{\ast }$-tagged jets at the LHC
• Nonlocal Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with wavefunction renormalization at finite temperature and chemical potential
• Collider Physics at HERA
• The sound produced by a fast parton in the quark-gluon plasma is a "crescendo"
• Momentum Broadening in Weakly Coupled Quark-Gluon Plasma (with a view to finding the quasiparticles within liquid quark-gluon plasma)
• Stirring Strongly Coupled Plasma
• How does transverse (hydrodynamic) flow affect jet-broadening and jet-quenching ?
• 3D Jet Tomography of Twisted Strongly Coupled Quark Gluon Plasmas
• A consistent description of kinetic equation with triangle anomaly
• Modification of Jet Substructure in Heavy Ion Collisions as a Probe of the Resolution Length of Quark-Gluon Plasma
• Constraint fitting of experimental data with a jet quenching model embedded in a hydrodynamical bulk medium
• A Simultaneous Description of Hadron and Jet Suppression in Heavy Ion Collisions
• Particle Correlations in Saturated QCD Matter
• Collisional Energy Loss of Non Asymptotic Jets in a QGP
• From hydro to jet quenching, coalescence and hadron cascade: a coupled approach to solving the $R_{AA}\otimes v_2$ puzzle
• Probing quark gluon plasma properties by heavy flavours
• System size and centrality dependence of charged hadron transverse momentum spectra in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at sqrt(s) = 62.4 and 200 GeV
• Pion femtoscopy in p+p collisions at sqrt(s)=200 GeV
• On multiple scatterings of mesons in hot and cold QCD matter
• A local Monte Carlo framework for coherent QCD parton energy loss
• Evolution of minimum-bias parton fragmentation in nuclear collisions
• Quark-Gluon Matter
• Initial Conditions for Modified DGLAP Evolution of the Modified Fragmentation Functions in Nuclear Medium
• Multiple Parton Scattering in Nuclei: Quark-quark Scattering
• Resolution Effects in the Hybrid Strong/Weak Coupling Model
• Anomalous transport model study of chiral magnetic effects in heavy ion collisions
• Shear Viscosity of a Gluon Plasma in Perturbative QCD
• Mach cones in the quark-gluon plasma: Viscosity, speed of sound, and effects of finite source structure
• Spacelike strings and jet quenching from a Wilson loop
• No-Drag String Configurations for Steadily Moving Quark-Antiquark Pairs in a Thermal Bath
• Evolution of the Mean Jet Shape and Dijet Asymmetry Distribution of an Ensemble of Holographic Jets in Strongly Coupled Plasma
• Parton Energy Loss and Modified Beam Quark Distribution Functions in Drell-Yan Process in p+A Collisions
• Deconfinement and chiral restoration in nonlocal PNJL models at zero and imaginary chemical potential
• Wigner functions of massive fermions in strong magnetic fields
• Away-side azimuthal distribution in a Markovian parton scattering model
• Parton energy loss in the mini quark-gluon plasma and jet quenching in proton-proton collisions
• Anisotropic hydrodynamic modeling of 200 GeV Au-Au collisions
• Fluctuations and asymmetric jet events in PbPb collisions at the LHC
• Fast partons as a source of energy and momentum in a perturbative quark-gluon plasma
• Jet Quenching in Heavy Ion Collisions
• 3D Jet Tomography of the Twisted Color Glass Condensate
• Probing the Color Structure of the Perfect QCD Fluids via Soft-Hard-Event-by-Event Azimuthal Correlations
• An overview of experimental results from ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at the CERN LHC: hard probes
• Event-by-event azimuthal anisotropy of jet quenching in relativistic heavy ion collisions
• Novel Phenomena in Particle Correlations in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions
• K*0 and phi Meson Production in Proton-Nucleus Interactions at sqrt(s) = 41.6 GeV
• Chromohydrodynamical instabilities induced by relativistic jets
• Two- and three-particle nonflow contributions to the chiral magnetic effect measurement by spectator and participant planes in relativistic heavy ion collisions
• Hard Probe of Geometry and Fluctuations in Heavy Ion Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}=$ 0.2, 2.76, and 5.5 TeV
• An overview of heavy quark energy loss puzzle at RHIC
• Out of Medium Fragmentation from Long-Lived Jet Showers
• New State of Nuclear Matter: Nearly Perfect Fluid of Quarks and Gluons in Heavy Ion Collisions at RHIC Energies
• Predictions for the LHC heavy ion programme
• Charged-particle rapidity density in Au+Au collisions in a quark combination model
• Refractive Index of Light in the Quark-Gluon Plasma with the Hard-Thermal-Loop Perturbation Theory
• Energy Loss Versus Energy Gain of Heavy Quarks in a Hot Medium
• Heavy Ion Physics at the LHC: What's new ? What's next ?
• Shear and Bulk Viscosities of a Weakly Coupled Quark Gluon Plasma with Finite Chemical Potential and Temperature---Leading-Log Results
• Stopping effects in U+U collisions with a beam energy of 520 MeV/nucleon
• Interacting hadron resonance gas model in magnetic field and the fluctuations of conserved charges
• Modified Fragmentation Function from Quark Recombination
• Constraining the equation of state with heavy quarks in the quasi-particle model of QCD matter
• Jet-induced gauge field instabilities in the quark-gluon plasma: A kinetic theory approach
• Jet Quenching at LHC
• Unitarity cutting rules for the nucleus excitation and topological cross sections in hard production off nuclei from nonlinear k_t-factorization
• Counting valence quarks at RHIC and LHC
• Relating $\hat{q}$, $\eta /s$ and $\Delta E$ in an expanding Quark-Gluon Plasma
• Effects of the formation time of parton shower on jet quenching in heavy-ion collisions
• Jet Tomography of Harmonic Fluctuations in the Initial Condition of Heavy Ion Collisions
• Quark mass dependence of the QCD temperature transition in magnetic fields
• Focus talk on interactions between jets and medium
• Heavy ion collisions and AdS/CFT
• Nuclear suppression at low energy heavy ion collisions
• Susceptibilities and critical exponents within the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model
• Baryon productions and collective flow of relativistic heavy-ion collisions in the AGS, SPS, RHIC and LHC energy regions($\sqrt{s_{NN}}\le 5$GeV to 5.5 TeV)
• Study of Quarkonium properties using SUSYQM method with baryonic chemical potential
• Energy loss of heavy quarks in the presence of magnetic field
• Light-front Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model at finite temperature and density
• Applications of Persistent Homology in Nuclear Collisions
• The influence of net-quarks on the yields and rapidity spectra of identified hadrons
• Thermalization component model of multiplicity distributions of charged hadrons at BNL($E_{NN}^{lab}=2-11.6GeV/c$), the CERN($E_{NN}^{lab}=20-200GeV/c$), and the BNL ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}=19.6-200GeV$)
• Multiplicity distributions for jet parton showers in a medium
• Empirical Constraints on Parton Energy Loss in Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions at RHIC
• Evolution of global polarization in relativistic heavy-ion collisions within a perturbative approach
• Review of nonflow estimation methods and uncertainties in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Chiral Symmetry transition in the Linear Sigma Model with quarks: Counting effective QCD degrees of freedom from low to high temperature
• QCD equation of state in a virial expansion
• Measurements of Dihadron Correlations Relative to the Event Plane in Au+Au Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{\mathrm{NN}}}}=200$ GeV
• RHIC results from LHC perspectives
• Mass dependence of the deconfinement and chiral restoration critical temperatures in nonlocal SU(2) PNJL models
• Signals of critical end point from jet quenching and quark energy loss in holographic QCD
• Treating divergence in quark matter by using energy projectors
• Calculating the jet quenching parameter in the plasma of NCYM theory from gauge/gravity duality
• Impact of the energy loss spatial profile and shear viscosity to entropy density ratio for the Mach cone vs. head shock signals produced by a fast moving parton in a quark-gluon plasma
• Probing Color Response - Wakes in a Color Plasma
• Jet energy loss in the quark-gluon plasma by stream instabilities
• Nuclear Medium Effects in $J/\Psi$ Production at HERA-B
• The theoretical description of the transverse momentum spectra: a unified model
• Rapidity-dependence of jet shape broadening and quenching
• Shear Viscosity in Weakly Coupled N-Component Scalar Field Theories
• Partonic Critical Opalescence and Its Impact on the Jet Quenching Parameter $\hat{q}$
• Collisional broadening of angular correlations in a multiphase transport model
• Reexamining charm versus bottom quark energy loss inside a color-deconfined medium
• Medium-induced flavor conversion and kaon spectra in electron-ion collisions
• Recent Results from PHENIX Experiment at RHIC: Exploring the QCD Medium
• Strongly Interacting Matter at Finite Chemical Potential : Hybrid Model Approach
• Gradient expansion technique for inhomogeneous, magnetized quark matter
• Rapidity dependence of hadron production in central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV
• Nuclear stopping and sideward-flow correlation from 0.35A to 200A GeV
• Calculating Jet $v_n$ and the Event Plane in the Presence of a Jet
• Probing Quarkonium Diffusion in a Magnetized Quark-Gluon Plasma
• Jet Quenching and Correlations
• Neutral pion production in d-Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
• Finite size effect on the thermodynamics of a hot and magnetized hadron resonance gas
• Multiplicity distributions inside parton cascades developing in a medium
• Hadron-hadron correlations at low and high $p_T$ in heavy-ion collisions
• Comparing different freeze-out scenarios in azimuthal hadron correlations induced by fast partons
• Measurement of away-side broadening with self-subtraction of flow in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{\mathrm{NN}}}}=200$ GeV
• Nuclear modification of $B_c$ mesons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions based on a linear Boltzmann transport model
• Data-driven subtraction of anisotropic flows in jet-like correlation studies in heavy-ion collisions
• Jet momentum reconstruction in the QGP background with machine learning
• Azimuthal Correlation Anisotropies in p + p Collisions Simulated by Pythia
• Chaotic thermalization in Yang-Mills-Higgs theory on a spacial lattice
• Developments in high energy theory
• Exciting gauge unstable modes of the quark-gluon plasma by relativistic jets
• Tagged jets and jet reconstruction as a probe of QGP induced partonic energy loss
• Tagged jets and jet reconstruction as a probe of the quark-gluon plasma
• Jet-like correlations of heavy-flavor particles - from RHIC to LHC
• Deciphering the properties of hot and dense matter with hadron-hadron correlations
• Emergence of thermal recoil jets in high-energy heavy-ion collisions
• Deep learning for jet modification in the presence of the QGP background
• Exploring system size dependence of jet modification in heavy-ion collisions
• Jets associated with Z^0 boson production in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC