Creating the perfect liquid in heavy-ion collisions

2010/04/30 by Barbara Jacak, B. Jacak, Peter Steinberg +1 · 51 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Collider #Engineering physics #Gluon #Heavy ion #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Ion #National laboratory #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quark #Quark–gluon plasma #Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider #Thermodynamics #Viscosity

paper · doi:10.1063/1.3431330

published in Physics Today 63(5), 39-43 (AIP Publishing)

openalex publication_date 2010/04/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Expecting to find a very weakly coupled gas of quarks and gluons created in energetic collisions at Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, experimenters found instead a strongly coupled liquid with almost no viscosity.

Cited by

• DREENA-C framework: joint RAA and v2 predictions and implications to QGP tomography
• The First Moment of Azimuthal Anisotropy in Nuclear Collisions from AGS to LHC Energies
• Early evolution constrained by high-p_T QGP tomography
• Dynamics of fundamental matter in N = 2* Yang-Mills theory
• Viscosity bound violation in viscoelastic Fermi liquids

Related

• Perfect Fluidity in Atomic Physics
• Gluon Saturation and the Formation Stage of Heavy Ion Collisions
• The Quark-Gluon-Plasma Liquid
• Heavy-ion physics
• Quark fluids in heavy ion collisions