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From SPS to RHIC: Breaking the barrier to the quark-gluon plasma

2001/01/01 by Ulrich Heinz, Ulrich W. Heinz · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-ph #nucl-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.1435938

published as AIP Conf.Proc.602:281-292,2001 · LaTex 12 pages, including 6 figures. Opening talk at the Conference "QCD@work", Martinafranca (Bari), June 16-20, 2001

openalex publication_date 2001/01/01 · arxiv created 2001/09/02 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

After 15 years of heavy-ion collision experiments at the AGS and SPS, the recent turn-on of RHIC has initiated a new stage of quark-gluon plasma studies. I review the evidence for deconfined quark-gluon matter at SPS energies and the recent confirmation of some of the key ideas by the new RHIC data. Measurements of the elliptic flow at RHIC provide strong evidence for efficient thermalization during the very early partonic collision stage, resulting in a well-developed quark-gluon plasma with almost ideal fluid-dynamical collective behavior and a lifetime of several fm/c.

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