Thursday, Jan 19, 2017, 10:30 AM, 385E
Jacquelyn Noronha-Hostler, (University of Houston)
The Quest for the Primordial Chromodynamic Liquid

Microseconds after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with an extremely hot and dense state of matter called the Quark Gluon Plasma. Then the tiniest building blocks of matter, quarks and gluons, were not yet confined inside of protons and neutrons but produced an exotic state of strongly interacting matter that behaved as a nearly perfect liquid. Over the past 15 years, collider experiments have been smashing heavy-ions together at nearly the speed of light in order to produce a tiny droplet with a radius (~ trillionth cm) and temperature high enough (~ a few trillion Kelvin) to recreate the Quark Gluon Plasma in the laboratory. While first principles Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics calculations of thermodynamic quantities have been very successful, dynamical properties of the QCD primordial liquid, such as its viscosity, remain elusive. In this seminar, the evolution of the Quark Gluon Plasma liquid is simulated via state-of-the-art relativistic viscous hydrodynamics combined with jets in order to address many of the most pressing questions in the field such as: How do we measure perfect fluidity? What is the smallest possible droplet of Quark Gluon Plasma? Can we map out the phase diagram of Quantum Chromodynamics?




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