Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics

topics and useful text book

There will be no homework assignments, no exams
Each student will have to prepare an essay on a particular topic,
which will be presented in the last two/three weeks of classes.

Grade = 60% attendance and contribution, 40% essay

TIME: Monday 2-3 pm , Wednesday 1-3 pm

Room: RLM 5.120 on Monday, ENS on Wednesday

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week 1: Jan 17-19

Introduction: Why heavy ion and high energy physics?

Particle, fields, conservation laws, standard model,

class1.ppt-file

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week 2: Jan 22-26

Hadron, quark interactions, parton model, QCD,

elementary and heavy ion reactions, kinematic variables

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week 3: Jan 29- Mar 2 by Mike Syphers

Accelerator physics accelerator1.pdf-file accelerator2.pdf-file

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week 4: Feb 5 - 9

Particle detectors, experimental setups class4a.ppt-file class4b.ppt-file

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week 5: Feb 12-16 by Sacha Kopp ?

Neutrino physics

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week 6: Feb 19-23

phase transition, chemical and kinetic freeze-out

statistical model, particle yield and spectra

class6.ppt-file

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week 7: Feb 26 - Mar 2

Thermal and hydrodynamical models for heavy ion reactions

Reading assignments:

nucl-th/0410017 (maybe nucl-th/0605008)

class7a.ppt-file and class7b.ppt-file

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week 8: Mar 5-9

Space time evolution of heavy ion reaction, particle production,

strange particle and resonance production class8.ppt-file

Strangeness Production in the Quark-Gluon Plasma
Rafelski et al., Phys. Rev. Letter 48, (1982) 1066
Rafelski et al., Phys. Rev. Letter 56, 2334.

Strangeness Production in Heavy Ion Collisions
Redlich et al., Nuc. Phys. A698 (2002) 94c.

Resonance Production in medium
C. Markert, nucl-ex/0503013

B. Abelev, nucl-ex/0604019

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March 12-16 Spring Break

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week 9: Mar 19-23

Rare and charm particle, production class9a.ppt-file class9b.ppt-file

week 10: Mar 26-30

Jets probing the medium, phase transition signatures, high
momentum probes class10a.ppt-file

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week 11: Apr 2-6

Future Experiments

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week 12: Apr 9-13

Student Essays

Monday: Mathew: Color Glas Condensat
Wednesday: Masayuki: Strangeness

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week 13: Apr 16-20

Student Essays

Monday: Kohei: ---
Wednesday: Jasmine: Chiral Symmetry,---, ----

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week 14: Apr 23-27

Student Essays

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week 15: Apr 30 -May 4 , Student Essays

Man-Fung: Glueballs

Ref. List:

Possible glueball production in relativitic heavy-ion collisions
hep-ph/0606251/ (2006)

The glueball; The fundamental particle of non-perturbative QCD
hep-ph/9608258/ (1996)

Chiral Suppression of Scalar-Glueball Decay
PRL 95, 172001 (2005)

Shuryak's "The QCD Vacuum, Hadrons and Superdense Matter" 2nd Ed. Sec 2.1.4
and Sec 5.3.1

Essay topics:

Are initial conditions relevant and how are they modeled ?

The usefulness of Lattice QCD

Is chiral symmetry a verifiable phase property ?

Why is energy loss in medium so fundamental ?

Is hydrodynamics really applicable and useful ?

Why do we learn more from heavy flavors than light flavors ?

Can energy loss be a first principles measurement ?

Is strangness enhancement a signature of QGP ?

J/y Suppression at SPS and RHIC.

The Higgs search at the LHC.

Heavy ion program at the LHC.

....