Quark Matter

From the Editors Preface: "Quark Matter 1987 was attended by about 250 scientists, representing 75 research institutions around the world - the scientific community engaged in experimental and theoretical studies of high energy nuclear collisions. The central theme of the meeting was the possibility of achieving extreme energy densities in extended systems of strongly interacting matter - with the ultimate aim of creating in the laboratory a deconfined state of matter, a state in which quarks and gluons attain the active degrees of freedom. High energy accelerator beams and cosmic radiation projectiles provide the experimental tools for this endeavour; on the theoretical side, it is intimately connected to recent developments in the non-perturbative study of quantum chromodynamics. Phase transitions between hadronic matter and quark-gluon plasma are of basic interest also for our understanding of the dynamics of the early universe ... A very special feature of this Sixth Quark Matter Conference was the advent of the first experimental results from dedicated accelerator studies. These were conducted during 1986/87 at the AGS of Brookhaven National Laboratory ... and at the CERN SPS ... An intense discussion of these data formed the main activity of the meeting.

This set of lectures deals with the transition from nuclear matter to quark matter. The reader will learn not only about the theory of quark-gluon plasmas but also how they are obtained in the laboratory through heavy-ion collisions or where they can be found in astrophysical objects such as compact stars. The book fills a gap between well-known textbook material and the research literature and is thus perfectly suited for postgraduate students who wish to enter this field, for lecturers looking for advanced material for their courses and for scientists in search of a modern source of reference on these topics.

This book focuses on new experimental and theoretical advances concerning the role of strange and heavy-flavour quarks in high-energy heavy-ion collisions and in astrophysical phenomena. The topics covered include • Strangeness and heavy-quark production in nuclear collisions and hadronic interactions, • Hadron resonances in the strongly-coupled partonic and hadronic medium, • Bulk matter phenomena associated with strange and heavy quarks, • QCD phase structure, • Collectivity in small systems, • Strangeness in astrophysics,• Open questions and new developments.

Understanding the quark structure of matter has been one of the most important advances in contemporary physics. It has unravelled a new and deeper level of structure in matter, and physics at that level reveals a unity and aesthetic simplicity never before attained. All forces emerge from a unique invariance principle and each of the basic interactions results from a specific symmetry property. Quarks interact among themselves through their ?colour?, as now accurately described by quantum chromodynamics.This volume brings together eight major review articles by Maurice Jacob, a physicist at the forefront of research on the quark structure of matter. He has, in particular, been involved with two research topics in this field. The first is the study of hadronic jets, which one actually sees instead of quarks, because of the opacity of the vacuum to colour. The second is the search for quark matter, a new form of matter believed to exist at high temperatures, when the vacuum should become transparent to colour.The papers in this volume provide a comprehensive review of these phenomenological studies on the quark structure of matter, and also a fasinating insight into the pace of recent progress in these areas. The book comes complete with an original introduction by the author, and also contains a pedagogical review on what is a most engrossing and rewarding field of research in physics.

The purpose of this volume is to trace the development of the theoretical understanding of quark-gluon plasma, both in terms of the equation of state and thermal correlation functions and in terms of its manifestation in high energy nuclear collisions. Who among us has not wondered how tall a mountain is on a neutron star, what happens when matter is heated and compressed to higher and higher densities, what happens when an object falls into a black hole, or what happened eons ago in the early universe? The study of quark-gluon plasma is related in one way or another to these and other thought provoking questions. Oftentimes the most eloquent exposition is given in the original papers. To this end a selection is made of what are the most important pioneering papers in this field. The early 1950s was an era when high energy multiparticle production in cosmic ray interactions attracted the attention of some of the brightest minds in physics, and so it should be no surprise that the first reprinted papers deal with the introduction of statistical models of particle production. The quark model arose in the 1960s, while QCD as such was recognized as the theory of the strong interactions in the 1970's. The behavior of matter at high temperatures and supranuclear densities became of wide interest in the nuclear and particle physics communities starting in the 1970s, which is when the concept of quark-gluon plasma became established. The history of the field has been traced up to the early 1990s. There are three reasons for stopping at that point in time. First, most of the key theoretical concepts and formalisms arose before 1993, although many of them continue to be developed today and hopefully well into the future. Second, papers written after 1992 are much more readily available than those writen before due to the advent of the World Wide Web and its electronic preprint databases and journals. Finally, in making this collection of reprints available as hardcopy one is limited in the number of pages, and some papers in the present selection should have been deleted in order to make room for post-1993 papers. For the same reason the subject focus must of necessity be limited, which means that in this reprint collection two wide subject areas are not addressed: the behavior of nuclear matter under extreme conditions is not reported, nor is quark matter in neutron stars. The broad categories into which the material has been placed, reflect the diverse studies of quark-gluon plasma and its manifestation. They are: phase-space models of particle production, perturbative QCD plasma, lattice gauge theory, fluid dynamics and flow, strangeness, heavy flavor (charm), electromagnetic signals, parton cascade and minijets, parton energy loss and jet quenching, Hanbury Brown--Twiss (HBT) interferometry, disoriented chiral condensates, phase transition dynamics and cosmology, and color superconductivity. Each chapter is prefaced by an introduction, which contains a list of significant papers which is more complete than the reprinted papers, though by no means exhaustive. It also contains citations to most relevant papers published up to the date of completion of this volume (fall 2002). It is hoped that the short reviews will help bring the reader up to date on the latest developments. The selection of papers cited in each chapter, and in particular the ones selected for reprinting, is solely the responsibility of the Editors. It is based on their best judgement and experience in this field dating back to the mid-1970s. In order to be reprinted a paper must have been pioneering in the sense of originality and impact on the field. Generally they have been cited over a hundred times by other papers published in refereed journals. The final selection was reviewed and discussed among the Editors repeatedly. Just because a paper is not included does not mean they do not know of it or do not have a high regard for it. All of the papers cited or reprinted are original research contributions. There are three other types of publications listed. The first is a compilation of books. The second is a list of reviews, many of which contain a significant amount of original material. The third is a list of the proceedings of the series of Quark Matter meetings, the primary series of international conferences in this field that is attended by both theorists and experimentalists.

A notable feature of this volume is the emphasis on the role of quark matter as well as the cosmic QCD phase transition in cosmology and astrophysics. In addition, there are several review talks, both in experiment and theory, summarising the state of the art and projection for the near future in this important and rapidly evolving area. This book will serve as an important source for researchers and graduate students in the area of quark-gluon plasma physics, excited hadronic matter, astrophysics, cosmology and other related areas.

This volume contains 14 review articles on the theory and phenomenology of the creation and diagnosis of quark-gluon plasma. They are written by active investigators of in the various research topics, which range from the QCD foundation through transport theory and thermalization models to the examination of possible signatures. The monograph should be useful not only to the experienced researchers in the subject but also to newcomers. Contents:The Confinement-Deconfinement Mechanism (J Polonyi)Simulating the Quark-Gluon Plasma on the Lattice (F Karsch)Quark-Gluon Transport Theory (H-T Elze & U Heinz)Applications of Transport Theory to Quark-Gluon Plasma (S Mrówczynski)Non-Equilibrium Aspects of Ultrarelativistic Nuclear Collisions (M Gyulassy)Color Tube Model of Quark-Gluon Plasma Formation in High Energy Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (A Bialas & W Czyz)Hadronic Matter in the String Model (K Sailer et al.)Hydrodynamics of Quark-Gluon Plasmas (J-P Blaizot & J-Y Ollitrault)Hadronization of a Quark-Gluon Plasma (U Heinz et al.)Dilepton Emmision in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions (P V Ruuskanen)Quark-Gluon Plasma Formation and Strangeness Evolution (P Koch)Colour Screening and Quark Deconfinement in Nuclear Collisions (H Satz)J/ψ Suppression, Signal of a Quark-Gluon Plasma? (J-P Blaizot & J-Y Ollitrault)Self-Similarity in Multiplicity Fluctuations (R C Hwa) Readership: High energy and nuclear physicists. Keywords:Quark-Gluon Plasma;Heavy-Ion Collisions;QCD;Colour Deconfinement;J/psi Suppression;Strangeness;Phase Transition;Correlations and Fluctuations;Interferometry;High Temperature Field TheoryReview: “… very useful both as an expository treatise and as a handy reference to the important primary literature.” Physics Today