Toward Understanding the QGP with the STAR Experiment at RHIC
- Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States); Cyclotron Institute, Texas A&M University
By accelerating heavy atomic nuclei (ions) to very large energies and then colliding these heavy ions at points where large particle detectors are positioned, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) provides the laboratory for studying nuclear matter under extreme conditions. It is under these extreme conditions that the matter is expected to undergo a phase transition, “melting” the protons and neutrons into their more fundamental constituents (quarks and gluons). The resulting state of matter is the so-called Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) phase and is believed to have existed in the early universe, briefly after the Big Bang, before it cooled and formed into the matter that we know today. RHIC, at Brookhaven National Laboratory, has been providing high-energy heavy-ion collisions since the year 2000. One of the particle detectors at RHIC is called the Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC (STAR). New sub-detectors within the STAR experiment are capitalizing on the high collision rates currently provided by RHIC, allowing the experiment to select and record certain rare physics observables. The production of rare particles requires a large amount of energy and thus occurs early in a heavy-ion collision, allowing those rare particles to experience the full evolution of the collision, including the medium creation under extreme (hot and dense) conditions and subsequently the cooling and expansion of the matter. The rare particles therefore serve as probes of the medium created. Two rare-probe measurements will be investigated in this project: 1) particles resulting from scatterings of quarks and gluons with a large energy transfer in the early stage of a heavy-ion collision, and 2) particles that are made up of heavy-quark pairs. The study of such rare probes can provide information about the density and temperature of the medium created at RHIC.
- Research Organization:
- Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP) (SC-26)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-07ER41485
- OSTI ID:
- 1432304
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-TAMU--41485-1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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