HIGH ENERGY NUCLEAR PHYSICS (Relativistic heavy ion collisions) wan ahmad tajuddin wan abdullah jabatan fizik universiti malaya national centre for particle physics December 2014
And it is He who created the heavens and the earth in six days - and His Throne had been upon water - that He might test you as to which of you is best in deed. But if you say, "Indeed, you are resurrected after death," those who disbelieve will surely say, "This is not but obvious magic."
@ LHC, CERN
Hot dense nuclear matter Quark-gluon plasma Hot dense nuclear matter
SPS @ CERN 17 GeV/ nucleon Pb LBL 1-2 GeV/ nucleon JINR 6 GeV/ nucleon AGS @ BNL RHIC @ BNL 200 GeV/ nucleon pair Cu, Au, U LHC @ CERN 2.76 TeV/ nucleon pair Pb
why condition in first microseconds in hot Big Bang
arXiv:11404.3294
Elementary particles and fields
hadrons
quantum chromodynamics
why QCD state at high temperatures
why Hadronization (~ confinement)
regime Typical temperature range – T = 300 MeV/k = 3.3 x 1012 K 10,000 x greater than in center of Sun Corresponding energy density – e =10 GeV/ fm3 Corresponding relativistic matter pressure – P ≈ e/3 = 0.52 x 1031 bar
Strangeness enhancement high temperature → strangeness enhanced Statistics: particle ratios → Tch , mB at chemical freezeout Experimental: 160 MeV < Tch < 180 MeV cf. expected QCD phase transition value ~170 MeV (lattice QCD calculations)
Heavy quarkonium suppression hot and deconfined medium – quarkonia (cf naked flavours) expected to “melt”
Jet quenching images courtesy CERN coloured particles damped in coloured media
Elliptic flow Collective anisotropy thermalization, hydrodynamics liquid-like
Colour glass condensate BFKL dynamics – saturation at Q2s ~ <Npart>/2 expect nch/A ~ 1/as(Q2s)
Collective effects Ridges – final state correlations
conclusions Quark-gluon plasma – perfect fluid Final state correlations? Many more new and interesting things in physics related to the nucleus
Thank you