1. HIGH ENERGY NUCLEAR PHYSICS (Relativistic heavy ion collisions)
wan ahmad tajuddin wan abdullah
jabatan fizik universiti malaya
national centre for particle physics
December 2014

2. 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."

3. @ LHC, CERN

5. Hot dense nuclear matter
Quark-gluon plasma
Hot dense nuclear matter

6. CERN
17 GeV/ nucleon Pb
LBL
1-2 GeV/ nucleon
JINR
6 GeV/ nucleon
BNL
BNL
200 GeV/ nucleon pair
Cu, Au, U
CERN
2.76 TeV/ nucleon pair Pb

7. why
condition in first microseconds in hot Big Bang

8. arXiv:

9. Elementary particles and fields

10. hadrons

11. quantum chromodynamics

12. why
QCD state at high temperatures

13. why
Hadronization
(~ confinement)

14. 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

15. 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)

17. Heavy quarkonium suppression
hot and deconfined medium – quarkonia (cf naked flavours) expected to “melt”

18. Jet quenching images courtesy CERN
coloured particles damped in coloured media

20. Elliptic flow
Collective anisotropy thermalization, hydrodynamics liquid-like

22. Colour glass condensate
BFKL dynamics – saturation at Q2s ~ <Npart>/2 expect nch/A ~ 1/as(Q2s)

24. Collective effects
Ridges – final state correlations

25. conclusions Quark-gluon plasma – perfect fluid
Final state correlations?
Many more new and interesting things in physics related to the nucleus

26. Thank you