Physical Society Colloquium

Hot QCD Matter: Liquid, Strong and Stringy?

Barbara Jacak

SUNY, Stony Brook

Colliding relativistic beams of heavy ions allows us to heat matter to temperatures above 300 MeV, converting it into a plasma of quarks and gluons. We observe that this new state of matter is a nearly ideal, highly opaque liquid plasma that is strongly coupled. A description based upon string theory and black holes in five dimensions makes this an iconic strongly coupled quantum system; other examples include ultracold fermionic atoms and strongly correlated condensed matter. I will discuss how we experimentally probe the early stages of the collision, and how we will resolve mysteries about hot QCD matter.