A Nearly Perfect Ink: The Quest for the Quark-Gluon Plasma at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

Berndt Oskar Mueller, Duke University

In my lecture I will survey the insights from the data obtained during the first three years of operation of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven. We have learned that collisions of two gold nuclei produce rapidly equilibrating matter, which flows almost like an ideal fluid, is opaque to hard partons, and shines brightly in baryons. I will discuss the implications of these results in the context of what we know about the properties of hot, strongly interacting matter. For those who may be looking for new theoretical challenges, I will also describe (some of) the problems which remain unexplained.

The P/T Colloquium is
typically held each
Thursday, 3:45–5:00 PM.
Refreshments are served
at 3:15 PM.