Clarendon Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PU
Professor Carlos Salgado, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
Joy Blanchard at tpadmin@physics.ox.ac.uk
Forming a Quark Gluon Plasma in a few Yoctoseconds
Abstract: Light takes just 3 yoctoseconds to traverse a proton—an ephemeral instant that nonetheless suffices to form a (locally) thermalized QCD medium from the initially out-of-equilibrium system right after a lead–lead collision at the LHC. Over the past two decades, experiments at CERN and Brookhaven National Laboratory have investigated the properties of this quark–gluon plasma, revealing it to be a nearly perfect liquid with the lowest viscosity ever observed in any known substance, and remarkably opaque to fast-moving colored particles. In this talk, I will review the current understanding of this system, with particular emphasis on the time evolution and physical mechanisms through which collective behavior emerges on such ultrashort timescales.