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Physical Society ColloquiumHas RHIC Discovered the Quark-Gluon Plasma?Peter SteinbergBrookhaven National LaboratoryThe goal of the heavy ion program at the RHIC collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory is to collide gold nuclei at the highest energies in order to create large volumes of strongly interacting matter. By systematic examination of the particles produced in these collisions, it it hoped to obtain evidence for the creation of a transient state of matter where quarks and gluons are allowed to propagate over large distances as quasi-free particles - the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). Furthermore, it is expected that the boundary between QGP and normal matter is characterized by a phase transition. Thus, the discovery of a QGP in Au+Au collisions would allow us to study features of QCD which may be unavailable in collisions of elementary particlesLast June, the New York Times reported that RHIC scientists had observed the `hottest, densest matter ever'. This talk will discuss the current understanding of the RHIC data, based on studies of gold-gold and deuteron-gold collisions. The latter has served as a control experiment to address the role of initial-state nuclear effects. Results from all of the RHIC experiments will be presented and discussed both in light of theoretical expectations and comparisons with results from elementary collisions.
Friday, October 17th 2003, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Keys Auditorium (room 112) |