Past Event: Babuška Forum

Creating the Quark Gluon Plasma at the LHC

Christina Markert, Physics Department, The University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

In ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions a fireball of hot and dense nuclear matter is created. When the energy density inside the fireball is very high, liberation of partons is expected to occur and a new phase of matter, the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), is formed. I will give an introduction into the strong force and present the ALICE experiment setup at the LHC collider in Switzerland to investigate the properties of the created QGP in Pb-Pb heavy ion collision.