Giubellino, P. (2009) Status and prospects of experiments with ultrarelativistic nuclear beams. Il nuovo cimento C, 32 (3\4). pp. 27-37. ISSN 1826-9885
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Abstract
Experiments with ultra-relativistic nuclear beams have been carried out since the early eighties, seeking a detailed understanding of Nuclear Matter at extreme temperatures and densities. In such conditions QCD predicts that quarks and gluons are no longer bound in hadrons, and form a so-called Quark-Gluon- Plasma (QGP), a state in which the Universe should have been a few microseconds after the Big Bang. This experimental programme has enjoyed enormous success, and the number of scientists involved has grown continuously through the years. In the meantime, while the experimental and theoretical tools to collect and understand the data were constantly improving, so has done the energy of the beams available for experiments. From the 1 GeV per nucleon pair of the Bevalac at Berkeley, accelerators have increased in energy to the AGS at BNL (few GeV) to the SPS at CERN (almost 20 GeV), to the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at BNL (200GeV). Sometime during 2010 the LHC will bring in another major step, going to 5500GeV. During these years an enormous path has been covered, and experimenters have learnt how to deal with events of unprecedented complexity, with first hundreds, then thousands of particles produced. The phase diagram of strongly interacting matter has been populated of measured points, and strategies have been developed to investigate the nature and dynamical evolution of the high-density system generated. Physicists are pursuing a new generation of experiments which will allow a quantum step in our understanding of the QGP but also a more detailed exploration of the phase diagram and in particular of the phase transition. In this paper, I will briefly review our present understanding of the physics with ultrarelativistic nuclear beams, and then outline the perspectives of the experiments for the coming years.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Relativistic heavy-ion collisions ; Quark-gluon plasma |
| Subjects: | 500 Scienze naturali e Matematica > 530 Fisica |
| Depositing User: | Marina Spanti |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Mar 2020 16:59 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Mar 2020 16:59 |
| URI: | http://eprints.bice.rm.cnr.it/id/eprint/16605 |
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