Decoding the QCD phase structure with relativistic nuclear collisions
Seminars
Special VBLHEP seminar
Date and Time: Thursday, 25 January 2018, at 11:30 AM
Coffee will be served at 11:15 AM
Venue: Big Conference Hall (bld. 215), Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics
Seminar topic: «Decoding the QCD phase structure with relativistic nuclear collisions»
Speaker: Professor Peter Braun-Munzinger (Extreme Matter Inst., GSI, Darmstadt; Phys. Inst., Heidelberg, Germany)
Abstract
We demonstrate that the phase structure of strongly interacting matter can be decoded via analysis of particle production in high energy nuclear collisions. This is achieved by making use of the observed thermalization pattern of particle abundances within the framework of the statistical hadronization approach at various collision energies. The thermalization holds not only for hadronic constituents composed of light quarks but also for hadrons containing charm quarks. The observed energy depen-dence of the production yields and fluctuations of different particle species contains characteristic features which are used to determine the temperature and baryo-chemical potential of the matter produced. The above observations imply quark-hadron duality at the QCD phase boundary and establish the first experimental delineation of the location of the phase change in strongly interacting matter. New experimental opportunities resulting from these findings are pointed out.