Heavy Ion Physics at RHIC

Abstract

The status of the physics of heavy ion collisions is reviewed based on measurements over the past 6 years from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The dense nuclear matter produced in Au+Au collisions with nucleon-nucleon c.m. energy $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV at RHIC corresponds roughly to the density and temperature of the universe a few microseconds after the `big-bang' and has been described as "a perfect liquid" of quarks and gluons, rather than the gas of free quarks and gluons, ``the quark-gluon plasma" as originally envisaged. The measurements and arguments leading to this description will be presented.

31 pages, 23 figures, Proceedings of Symposium "50+ Years of High Energy Physics at UB", University at Buffalo, NY, October 20-21,2006

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• The Onset of Deconfinement in Nuclear Collisions
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• How hadron collider experiments contributed to the development of QCD: from hard-scattering to the perfect liquid