The Search for the Quark-Gluon Plasma

Abstract

We provide an overview of the present understanding of the transition from hadrons to a quark-gluon plasma, its signatures, and the experimental results so far. We discuss results of numerical simulations of the lattice gauge theory and critically evaluate the various observables that have been proposed as signatures of the QCD phase transition. We place the existing data from relativistic heavy ion experiments at the Brookhaven AGS and CERN SPS into perspective and provide an overview of the techniques and strategies that will be employed in the search for the quark-gluon plasma at heavy ion colliders, such as RHIC and the LHC.

Review to be published in Annual Reviews of Nuclear and Particle Science (1996)

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• Equation of State for the SU(3) Gauge Theory
• Charmonium Composition and Nuclear Suppression
• Evidence for a high entropy phase in nuclear collisions
• The Maximum Lifetime of the Quark-Gluon Plasma
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• Bose-Einstein Correlations for Expanding Finite Systems
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Cited by in corpus (192)

• Experimental and Theoretical Challenges in the Search for the Quark Gluon Plasma: The STAR Collaboration's Critical Assessment of the Evidence from RHIC Collisions
• Quark Gluon Plasma an Color Glass Condensate at RHIC? The perspective from the BRAHMS experiment
• Disappearance of back-to-back high $p_T$ hadron correlations in central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV
• Femtoscopy in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions: Two Decades of Progress
• Centrality dependence of high pT hadron suppression in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(sNN)=130 GeV
• Energy loss in perturbative QCD
• Enhanced J/Psi Production in Deconfined Quark Matter
• First Results from Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC
• Fully integrated transport approach to heavy ion reactions with an intermediate hydrodynamic stage
• Particle Interferometry for Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Thermalization of Strongly Coupled Field Theories
• Causal Theories of Dissipative Relativistic Fluid Dynamics for Nuclear Collisions
• Holographic Thermalization
• Dynamics of Hot Bulk QCD Matter: from the Quark-Gluon Plasma to Hadronic Freeze-Out
• Signatures of Quark-Gluon-Plasma formation in high energy heavy-ion collisions: A critical review
• Review of Jet Measurements in Heavy Ion Collisions
• Results from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
• Clocking hadronization in relativistic heavy ion collisions with balance functions
• Common Suppression Pattern of eta and pi^0 Mesons at High Transverse Momentum in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
• Centrality Dependence of pi^0 and eta Production at Large Transverse Momentum in sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV d+Au Collisions
• Classical Gluon Radiation in Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions
• Hydrodynamic Approaches in Relativistic Heavy Ion Reactions
• Elliptic flow from a parton cascade
• Phase transitions in the early and the present Universe
• Azimuthal anisotropy and correlations at large transverse momenta in $p+p$ and Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}$= 200 GeV
• Amplification of Cosmological Inhomogeneities by the QCD Transition
• J/psi Production in sqrt (s_NN)= 200 GeV Cu+Cu Collisions
• Electric Charge Separation in Strong Transient Magnetic Fields
• Narrowing of the Balance Function with Centrality in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 130 GeV
• Excitation functions of hadronic observables from SIS to RHIC energies
• Propagation of Charm Quarks in Equilibrating Quark Gluon Plasma
• Dynamical renormalization group approach to relaxation in quantum field theory
• Hydrodynamics Near a Chiral Critical Point
• Hadronic freeze-out following a first order hadronization phase transition in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Relation between the Polyakov loop and the chiral order parameter at strong coupling
• Hadronic observables from SIS to SPS energies - anything strange with strangeness ?
• Expanding Quark-Gluon Plasmas: Transverse Flow, Chemical Equilibration and Electromagnetic Radiation
• Elliptic flow in heavy ion collisions near the balance energy
• Dynamical renormalization group resummation of finite temperature infrared divergences
• Radiative Energy-Loss of Heavy Quarks in a Quark-Gluon Plasma
• Azimuthal Asymmetry of Direct Photons in High Energy Nuclear Collisions
• Effects of Parton Intrinsic Transverse Momentum on Photon Production in Hard-Scattering Processes
• Parton rescattering and screening in Au+Au collisions at RHIC
• First-Order Chiral Phase Transition in High-Energy Collisions: Can Nucleation Prevent Spinodal Decomposition?
• Explosive Decomposition in Ultrarelativistic Heavy Ion Collision
• Anomalous centrality evolution of two-particle angular correlations from Au-Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 62 and 200 GeV
• Chemical non-equilibrium and deconfinement in 200 A GeV Sulphur induced reactions
• Forming Disoriented Chiral Condensates through Fluctuations
• Dynamical Renormalization Group Approach to Quantum Kinetics in Scalar and Gauge Theories
• The Deconfinement Phase Transition in Asymmetric Matter
• Asymptotic Dynamics in Scalar Field Theory: Anomalous Relaxation
• Real-time Relaxation and Kinetics in Hot Scalar QED: Landau Damping
• Space-time evolution and HBT analysis of relativistic heavy ion collisions in a chiral SU(3) x SU(3) model
• Anti-flow of K${}_s^0$ Mesons in 6 AGeV Au + Au Collisions
• Centrality Dependence of Direct Photons in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
• Production of multistrange hadrons, light nuclei and hypertriton in central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 11.5 and 200 GeV
• Observing Quark-Gluon Plasma with Strange Hadrons
• Baryonic Strangeness and Related Susceptibilities in QCD
• Real-time nonequilibrium dynamics in hot QED plasmas: dynamical renormalization group approach
• Non-equilibrium evolution of a `Tsunami': Dynamical Symmetry Breaking
• Phenomenological study of light (anti)nuclei, (anti)hypertriton and di-Lambda production at RHIC
• Specific Heat of Matter Formed in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions
• Mass dependence of light nucleus production in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions
• Angular Dependence of the Nuclear Enhancement of Drell-Yan Pairs
• Enhanced photon production from quark-gluon plasma: Finite-lifetime effect
• Centrality-dependent direct photon pt spectra in Au+Au collisions at RHIC
• Anomalous Kinetics of Hard Charged Particles: Dynamical Renormalization Group Resummation
• Systematic Study of the Kaon to Pion Multiplicity Ratios in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Fermion Damping in a Fermion-Scalar Plasma
• Chiral-symmetry restoration in the linear sigma model at nonzero temperature and baryon density
• Jets and produced particles in pp collisions from SPS to RHIC energies for nuclear applications
• Chiral symmetry in linear Sigma model in magnetic environment
• Gluon Radiation and Coherent States in Ultrarelativistic Nuclear Collisions
• Deconfinement and Quarkonium Suppression
• Classical Gluon Radiation in Ultrarelativistic Nuclear Collisions: Space-Time Structure, Instabilities, and Thermalization
• Excluded Volume Effects in the Quark Meson Coupling Model
• Hydrodynamical instabilities in an expanding quark gluon plasma
• Elliptic flow of thermal photons in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV
• Review of HBT or Bose-Einstein correlations in high energy heavy ion collisions
• Kinetic Freeze-out and Radial Flow in 11.6 A GeV Au+Au Collisions
• Continuous Decoupling of Dynamically Expanding Systems
• Inflation from Tsunami-waves
• Nuclear modification of ${\rm Y}$ states in pPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=$ 5.02 TeV
• Mid-rapidity ${\pi }^{\pm }$, $K^{\pm }$, and $\bar{p}$ spectra and particle ratios from STAR
• An introduction to Thermal Field Theory and Some of its Application
• Role of event multiplicity on hadronic phase lifetime and QCD phase boundary in ultrarelativistic collisions at energies available at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and CERN Large Hadron Collider
• Off-shell effects in dilepton production from hot interacting mesons
• Correlations and Fluctuations in STAR
• Seeing phi meson through the dilepton spectra in heavy-ion collisions
• Enhanced antiproton production in Pb(160 AGeV)+Pb reactions: evidence for quark gluon matter?
• Hybrid model calculations of direct photons in high-energy nuclear collisions
• Multiplicity Fluctuations in Au+Au Collisions at RHIC
• Is hydrodynamics relevant to RHIC collisions?
• Microscopic coloured quark-dynamics in the soft non-perturbative regime -- Description of hadron formation in relativistic S+Au collisions at CERN
• Initial Time Singularities in Non-Equilibrium Evolution of Condensates and Their Resolution in the Linearized Approximation
• Quantum kinetics and thermalization in an exactly solvable model
• Centrality and system size dependence of (multi-strange) hyperons at 40$A$ and 158$A$ GeV: A comparison between a binary collision and a Boltzmann + hydrodynamic hybrid model
• Analysis of reaction dynamics at RHIC in a combined parton/hadron transport approach
• Relativistic Correction to Charmonium Dissociation Temperature
• Enhanced Event-by-Event Fluctuations in Pion Multiplicity as a Signal of Disoriented Chiral Condensates at RHIC
• Partons in Phase Space
• Non-equilibrium quantum plasmas in scalar QED: photon production, magnetic and Debye masses, and conductivity
• Deuterons and space-momentum correlations in high energy nuclear collisions
• Fluctuations of the Color-superconducting Order Parameter in Heated and Dense Quark Matter
• The Polyakov loop in various representations in the confined phase of QCD
• Finite-Size Effects on Nucleation in a First-Order Phase Transition
• Equation of State and Phase Fluctuations near the Chiral Critical Point
• Relaxing Near the Critical Point
• Nucleation versus Spinodal decomposition in a first order quark hadron phase transition
• Entropy Production in Relativistic Hydrodynamics
• Nuclear Shadowing Effects on Prompt Photons at RHIC and LHC
• Experimental balance energies and isospin-dependent nucleon-nucleon cross-sections
• Direct photons: a nonequilibrium signal of the expanding quark-gluon plasma
• Baryon Number Transport in High Energy Nuclear Collisions
• Calculation of the expansion rate of the three-volume measure in high-energy heavy-ion collisions
• Understanding the energy dependence of $B_2$ in heavy ion collisions: Interplay of volume and space-momentum correlations
• Strangeness Production in Microscopic Transport Models
• Out of Equilibrium Non-perturbative Quantum Field Dynamics in Homogeneous External Fields
• Kaon Interferometry as Signal for the QCD Phase Transition at RHIC
• Strangeness enhancement from strong color fields at RHIC
• Global observables and secondary interactions in central Au+Au reactions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ AGeV
• Beam energy dependence of pseudorapidity distributions of charged particles produced in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC energies
• Direct photon calculations in heavy-ion collisions at s(NN)**1/2 = 62.4 - 200 AGeV in a (3+1) dimensional hybrid approach
• High Transverse Momentum Results from the STAR Collaboration
• Silicon Pad Detectors for the PHOBOS Experiment at RHIC
• Photon production from Pb+Pb collisions at {$\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$} = 5.02 TeV at LHC and at {$\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$} = 39 TeV at FCC
• Direct photons in Pb+Pb at CERN-SPS from microscopic transport theory
• Semi-hard scattering of partons at SPS and RHIC: A study in contrast
• Photon production from a thermalized quark gluon plasma: quantum kinetics and nonperturbative aspects
• Rescattering Effects on Intensity Interferometry
• QGP Theory: Status and Perspectives
• Analog geometry in an expanding fluid from AdS/CFT perspective
• AdS/CFT applications to relativistic heavy ion collisions: a brief review
• Reconstructing lattice QCD spectral functions with stochastic pole expansion and Nevanlinna analytic continuation
• Chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement in Coulomb Gauge QCD
• Effects from inhomogeneities in the chiral transition
• Rapidity and Energy Dependences of Temperatures and Volume Extracted from Identified Charged Hadron Spectra in Proton-Proton Collisions at a Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS)
• Non-equilibrium dynamics in quantum field theory at high density: the tsunami
• Disentangling the development of collective flow in high energy proton proton collisions with a multiphase transport model
• Anomalous Pseudoscalar-Photon Vertex In and Out of Equilibrium
• Can Doubly Strange Dibaryon Resonances be Discovered at RHIC?
• Low-m_t charged pion asymmetry enhancement from hadronization of QGP
• Zipf's law in Nuclear Multifragmentation and Percolation Theory
• Treating divergence in quark matter by using energy projectors
• Trapped surfaces in a hadronic fluid
• Low-mass dielectrons from the PHENIX experiment at RHIC
• Gauge dependence of the fermion quasiparticle poles in hot gauge theories
• K-Factors in Parton Cascades at RHIC and SPS
• Heavy quark energy loss and thermalization in hot and dense nuclear matter
• Light-Cone QCD Plasma
• Effect of the chromo-electromagnetic field fluctuations on heavy quark propagation at the LHC energies
• Cosmological particle creation in a hadronic fluid
• Analogue surface gravity near the QCD chiral phase transition
• Multiplicity dependence of ${\chi }_c$ and ${\chi }_b$ meson production
• Coherence Time Effects on J/psi Production and Suppression in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
• The small $x$ nuclear shadowing at DIS
• Effect of color reconnection on multiplicity dependent charged particle production in Pythia-generated $pp$ collisions at the LHC energies
• QCD Phase Boundary and the Hadrochemical Horizon
• Search for Deconfinement in NA49 at the CERN SPS
• Nonequilibrium perturbation theory for spin-1/2 fields
• Dynamical growth of the hadron bubbles during the quark-hadron phase transition
• Accelerating Universes from Short-Range Interactions
• Third order viscous hydrodynamics from the entropy four current
• Jet quenching and direct photon production
• Elimination of influence of neutron-skin size difference of initial colliding nuclei in Pb+Pb collisions
• Particle abundances and spectra in the hydrodynamical description of relativistic nuclear collisions with light projectiles
• Evidence of Coulomb liquid phase in few-electron droplets
• Strangeness production in high-multiplicity events
• Soft Electromagnetic Radiations From Equilibrating Quark-Gluon Plasma
• Deciphering Deconfinement in Correlations of Conserved Charges
• Recent results on strangeness production from NA49
• Out of equilibrium quantum field dynamics of an initial thermal state after a change in the external field
• Neural network biased corrections: Cautionary study in background corrections for quenched jets
• Inclusive and Direct Photons in S + Au Central Collisions at 200A GeV/c
• Specific Interactions at Cosmic Ray Energies for Extensive Air Showers Experiments
• The freeze-out properties of hyperons in a microscopic transport model
• Out of equilibrium quantum field dynamics in external fields
• Investigating jet induced identified hadron productions from the relative transverse activity classifier in pp collision at LHC
• Quark Stars: Features and Findings
• Pion superfluid phase transition at finite isospin chemical potential
• Electromagnetic Radiation from Broken Symmetries in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions
• Measurements of heavy-flavor jets with ALICE at the LHC
• Energy loss of heavy-flavor quarks in color string medium
• Direct photon emission from hadronic sources: Hydrodynamics vs. Transport theory
• Photon Production from Charge-Asymmetric Hot and Dense Matter
• High-order fluctuations of temperature in hot QCD matter
• Jet Measurements in Heavy-ion Collisions with CMS
• Study of medium modified jet shape observables in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV using EPOS and JEWEL event generators
• Soft Photons from transport and hydrodynamics at FAIR energies
• Calculations of direct photon emission in Heavy Ion Collisions at \sqrt{s_NN} = 200 GeV
• Medium modification of jet shape observables in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$= 2.76 TeV using EPOS and JEWEL event generators
• Spectra and elliptic flow of light hadrons in an expanding fire-cylinder model for the RHIC Beam Energy Scan