Understanding the Quark-Gluon Plasma

• Andre Mischke

Room: H331 Abstract: High-energy collisions of heavy atomic nuclei allow the study of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a high-density state of strongly-interacting matter. In this phase of matter, colour confinement of quarks and gluons into hadrons should vanish and chiral symmetry is expected to be restored. Charm and beauty quarks are particularly good probes since they are dominantly produced by initial hard scattering processes and interact with the surrounding QCD matter through parton energy loss. The magnitude of the parton energy loss is expected to depend on the colour charge density of the medium traversed and the parton characteristics. The ultimative goal is to reveal the dynamical properties of the plasma phase through the determination of e.g. the drag coefficient and the dissipation of the radiated energy. Recent measurements on heavy-flavour production at the CERN-Large Hadron Collider will be discussed.