On Wednesday 17th April at 4pm we will have the privilege to hear Professor Krishna Rajagopal (MIT-USA) discussing the probing the Quark Gluon Plasma, the most perfect liquid ever observed. This colloquium, co-organized by LIP, will take place in Room PA1. Refreshments will be served afterwards.
Heavy ion collisions reproduce droplets of the trillions-of-degrees-hot liquid that filled the microseconds-old universe, conventionally called quark-gluon plasma (QGP) but better thought of as hot quark soup. Over the past twenty years, data obtained via recreating this primordial liquid have shown that it is the most liquid liquid in the universe, making it the first complex matter to form as well as the source of all protons and neutrons. After an extended introduction, beginning from Rutherford’s discovery of the nucleus and the discovery of quarks and the laws that govern them, and a look at what we have learned about the formation and properties of the primordial liquid from heavy ion collisions, I will focus on the road ahead, in particular on new probes being developed to answer questions like: How does a strongly coupled liquid emerge, given that what you will see if you can probe QGP with high resolution is weakly coupled quarks and gluons? How can we use jets to see the inner workings of QGP and answer this question? And how does the droplet of QGP ripple after it has been probed by a passing jet?