No Arabic abstract
After decades of painstaking research, the field of heavy ion physics has reached an exciting new era. Evidence is mounting that we can create a high temperature, high density, strongly interacting ``bulk matter state in the laboratory -- perhaps even a quark-gluon plasma. This strongly interacting matter is likely to provide qualitative new information about the fundamental strong interaction, described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). These lectures provide a summary of experimental heavy ion research, with particular emphasis on recent results from RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In addition, we will discuss what has been learned so far and the outstanding puzzles.
We review progress in the study of antinuclei, starting from Diracs equation and the discovery of the positron in cosmic-ray events. The development of proton accelerators led to the discovery of antiprotons, followed by the first antideuterons, demonstrating that antinucleons bind into antinuclei. With the development of heavy-ion programs at the Brookhaven AGS and CERN SPS, it was demonstrated that central collisions of heavy nuclei offer a fertile ground for research and discoveries in the area of antinuclei. In this review, we emphasize recent observations at Brookhavens Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and at CERNs Large Hadron Collider, namely, the antihypertriton and the antihelium-4, as well as measurements of the mass difference between light nuclei and antinuclei, and the interaction between antiprotons. Physics implications of the new observations and different production mechanisms are discussed. We also consider implications for related fields, such as hypernuclear physics and space-based cosmic-ray experiments.
We present measurement of elliptic flow, $v_2$, for charged and identified particles at midrapidity in Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7 - 39 GeV. We compare the inclusive charged hadron $v_2$ to those from transport model calculations, such as UrQMD model, AMPT default model and AMPT string-melting model. We discuss the energy dependence of the difference in $v_2$ between particles and anti-particles. The $v_2$ of $phi$ meson is observed to be systematically lower than other particles in Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 11.5 GeV.
The ultra-relativistic heavy-ion programs at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider have evolved into a phase of quantitative studies of Quantum Chromodynamics at very high temperatures. The charm and bottom hadron production offer unique insights into the remarkable transport properties and the microscopic structure of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) created in these collisions. Heavy quarks, due to their large masses, undergo Brownian motion at low momentum, provide a window on hadronization mechanisms at intermediate momenta, and are expected to merge into a radiative-energy loss regime at high momentum. We review recent experimental and theoretical achievements on measuring a variety of heavy-flavor observables, characterizing the different regimes in momentum, extracting pertinent transport coefficients and deducing implications for the inner workings of the QGP medium.
We review hadron production in heavy ion collisions with emphasis on pion and kaon production at energies below 2 AGeV and on partonic collectivity at RHIC energies.
A systematic search for a critical point in the phase diagram of QCD matter is underway at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and is planned at several future facilities. Its existence, if confirmed, and its location will greatly enhance our understanding of QCD. In this note we emphasize several important issues that are often not fully recognized in theoretical interpretations of experimental results relevant to the critical point search. We discuss ways in which our understanding on these issues can be improved.