Theoretical Nuclear Physics

Texas A&M Research Foundation, College Station TX

Investigators

Abstract

0098805 Ko The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory allows for the first time the creation in the laboratory of nuclear matter with energy density that exceeds the critical value for making a transition into its constituent quarks and gluons. The resulting quark-gluon plasma is believed to exist only in the interior of neutron stars and during the first microsecond after the Big Bang. Since the quark-gluon plasma is only formed for a brief time during the early stage of heavy ion collisions, to verify its existence and to study its properties pose a great challenge both experimentally and theoretically. In this project, we shall develop a multiphase transport model that can describe the interaction between incoming nuclei, the subsequent formation of the quark-gluon plasma, the eventual phase transition back to the hadronic matter, and the final expansion of the hot dense hadronic matter. We will then use the model to find possible signals for the quark-gluon plasma. In particular, we shall investigate if effects due to the quark-gluon plasma can be seen in the collective dynamics of final particles, in the photon and dilepton spectra, and from the abundance of heavy particles that consist of strange and charm quarks.