Transcript No Slide Title

The Mini-bang :
Search for the Quark Gluon Plasma
Virtual Journey from the Big-Bang to the Mini-Bang.
MDAPT Meeting at Wayne State University, March 20, 2002
Prof. Claude Pruneau
Wayne State University
The Night Sky
• The Stars
• And the wanderers
• The planets
• What else ?
Mosaic of 51 wide-angle photographs. Made over a three year period from locations in
California (USA), South Africa, and Germany, the individual pictures were digitized and
stitched together to create an apparently seamless 360 by 180 degree view.
Virgo Cluster
Increasing
Red Shift
With
Increasing
Distance
Doppler Effect
Doppler Effect of light from moving Stars
The further apart galaxies are, the faster they
move away from one another.
Expanding Universe
Expanding
Universe
Expanding
Universe
Fornax
cluster barred
spiral galaxy
NGC1365
HST Picture:
Identification of
50 Cepheids
variable stars
Wendy Freedman et al.(Carnegie Observatories), HST Key Project Team, and NASA
Measurements of Hubble Expansion:
• Hubble Constant : 70 km/sec/mpc (10%)
• Galaxies appear to be moving 160,000 miles per hour
faster for every 3.3 million light-years away from Earth.
Big Bang Model
A broadly accepted theory for the origin and
evolution of our universe.
It postulates that 12 to 14 billion years ago, the
portion of the universe we can see today was only
a few millimeters across. It has since expanded
from this hot dense state into the vast and much
cooler cosmos we currently inhabit.
In the beginning, there was a Big Bang, a
colossal explosion from which everything in
the Universe sprung out.
Experimental Evidence of the Big Bang

Expansion of the universe


Abundance of the light elements H, He, Li


Edwin Hubble's 1929 observation that galaxies were generally
receding from us provided the first clue that the Big Bang theory
might be right.
The Big Bang theory predicts that these light elements should have
been fused from protons and neutrons in the first few minutes after
the Big Bang.
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation

The early universe should have been very hot. The cosmic
microwave background radiation is the remnant heat leftover from
the Big Bang.
Cosmic Microwave Background
99.97% of the radiant energy of the
Universe was released within the first
year after the Big Bang itself and now
permeate space in the form of a
thermal 3 K radiation field.
COBE CMB Measurement
• CMB spectrum is that of a nearly perfect blackbody with a temperature
of 2.725 +/- 0.002 K.
• Observation matches predictions of the hot Big Bang theory
extraordinarily well.
• Deviation from perfect black body spectrum less than 0.03 %
• Nearly all of the radiant energy of the Universe was released within the
first year after the Big Bang.
How did we get from there…
… to here?
Time
What is Matter Made Of?
Fire
 Water
 Earth
 Air
… that is, according to
the Greeks!

Mendeleev’s Periodic Table of
Elements
What is Matter Made Of?
An atom
contains a
nucleus...
…which
contain up
and down
quarks.
…which
contains
protons and
neutrons...
Elementary Particles
Quarks are confined
(hadrons)...
… and gluons
are the guards...
Set the Quarks
Free !!!
How? Create a QuarkGluon Plasma !
Quarks Flavors and Families
light and
abundant
heavier, rare
very heavy,
very rare
What is a Quark-Gluon Plasma?
Phase Transitions
ICE
WATER
Add
heat
STEAM
Add
heat
Quark Gluon Plasma is another
phase of matter!
Phases of Water
Pressure
How to Create a Quark-Gluon Plasma
How to create a Quark-Gluon Plasma
Quark Gluon Plasma
RHIC Collision
Quark-Gluon
Plasma
Key
Quarks
Gluons
RHIC: Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
Brookhaven
National Laboratory,
Long Island, NY
The RHIC Complex
1. Tandem Van
de Graaff
6
2. Heavy Ion
Transfer Line
5
3
3. Booster
4. Alternating Gradient
Synchrotron (AGS)
4
2
1
5. AGS-to-RHIC
Transfer Line
6. RHIC ring
Inside the RHIC Ring
• Underground tunnel
• Super-conducting
magnets cooled by liquid
helium (@ 4.5 K)
• 1740 Magnets
• 2.4 Mile circumference
RHIC Beam Collisions
•Gold nuclei
•Traveling at near light speed
• 99.995 % actually…
•Hit head-on
•Crash through each other
•Release shower of particles
RHIC Beam Collisions
Approach
Collision
Particle Shower
Collision time ~ 10-22 seconds
Actual RHIC Collisions
Each
collision
produces
thousands of
particles!
Collision measured in the Star Detector
Measuring RHIC Collisions
Four complementary experiments
Who’s Involved in RHIC?
People from around the world
The STAR Experiment
Star Experiment (Construction)
WSU Relativistic Heavy Ion Group
Faculty :
Students:
Rene Bellwied
Maria Castro
Tom Cormier
Alex Stolpovsky
Sean Gavin
David Bower
Saumitra Chowdhury
Claude Pruneau
Sergei Voloshin
Mohamed Abdel-Aziz
Vishist Mandapaka
5 recent graduates
Wayne State Contribution to STAR/RHIC
Silicon Vertex Tracker (SVT)
Electromagnetic Calorimeter (EMC)
Charged particles produced in a
Single Au + Au collision at an
energy of 130 A GeV (25.6 TeV)
STAR TPC
Pad readout
2×12 super-sectors
190 cm
Outer sector
6.2 × 19.5 mm2 pad
3940 pads
Inner sector
2.85 × 11.5 mm2 pad
1750 pads
60 cm
127 cm
Pixel Pad Readout
O
STAR
Readout arranged like the face of a clock - 5,690 pixels per sector
JT: 48
The Berkeley Lab
Momentum Measurement
B=0.5 T
Radius: R
p+
Trajectory is a helix
in 3D; a circle in the
transverse plane
Collision Vertex
p  mv  qBR
Multiplicity
dNh-/d|=0 = 280120
dNch/d|=0 = 567 138
38%  pp
52%  SPS
Multiplicity dominated by Geometry
Relatively flat in  (1.)
Centrality Consistent with other
experiments
sNN  130GeV
Transverse Spectra
STAR
Preliminary
Power Law:
-n
A (1+pt /p0)
<pt>=0.5080.012GeV/c (top 5%), increases from pp, SPS
<pt> Scaling
 pT  AA  0.3 
s
s AA
( pT  pp  0.3)
s pp
dNch / d
pR 2
Saturation model:
J. Schaffner-Blielich, et al. nucl-th/0108048
D. Kharzeev, et al. hep-ph/0111315
Proton, Anti-proton




Small PID range
Finite Baryon Stopping
Low net baryon density
High total baryon production
p/p ratio
STAR
NA44
RHIC:
1/3 from transport
2/3 proton from production (how?)
(AGS: 10-4; SPS: 1/10)
Small centrality dependence
Small effect of p absorption?
Antinuclei
A
 d 3 NN 
d NA
E 3  BA E 3 
d P
 d p 
3
P
1
p  , B2 
A
V
1 fm
R(deuteron )  R(source )
Results





Very high temperature achieved
Collective/hydrodynamic flow
Saturation of strange particle
production.
Modification of matter properties.
Accumulating evidence that a “new”
phase of matter is produced in Au+Au
collisions.
Conclusions




A virtual journey from our solar system
outward towards to distant galaxies and
backward in time to the big bang.
QGP existed for a time of 1 micro-second
after the big-bang.
Production of QGP studied at BNL in high
energy gold on gold collisions.
Exciting results and preliminary evidence of a
new form of matter.
RHIC Web Pages
rhic15.physics.wayne.edu
www.rhic.bnl.gov
www.star.bnl.gov