Quark-Gluon Plasma at the LHC: studying the extreme state of QCD with heavy-ion collisions

by Andrea Dainese (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

Tuesday 1 Feb 2022, 15:00 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Abstract: The LHC is nowadays the frontier machine for the experimental study of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), a state of strongly-interacting matter that has constituted the Universe a few microseconds after the Big Bang and that is expected to be formed in high-energy collisions of heavy nuclei. In lead-lead collisions at the LHC, an energy density larger by two orders of magnitude than that of atomic nuclei and a temperature of the order of 10^12 K are attained. Under these conditions, according to QCD calculations on the lattice, the confinement of coloured quarks and gluons into colourless hadrons vanishes. The main experimental observables for the characterisation of the QGP properties will be introduced and a selection of the results obtained by the LHC experiments will be presented.

Dainese_Seminario_Feb2022.pdf