HEP-Astro Seminar | Creating droplets of the early universe in the laboratory with nuclear collisions

Zoom link:
https://umich.zoom.us/j/91409362110?pwd=UDlja2FuYlZWVFNEMWFrOTlkWFNEZz09

Abstract: In the first few microseconds after the big bang, the universe was in a state of matter called the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Research into surprising effects found in collisions of a light nucleus with a heavy nucleus is one of the main pillars of present-day research in high energy nuclear physics, and the discovery of QGP droplet formation in these small-volume collisions has fomented major developments in relativistic hydrodynamics. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory has conducted a geometry scan, comprising collisions of three different systems with three different intrinsic geometries. The PHENIX collaboration found the intrinsic geometry to be manifest in the measured correlations, confirming QGP droplet formation, and published the results in Nature Physics in 2019. A new PHENIX publication, accepted by Phys Rev C, explores these measurements in further detail by examining longitudinal dynamics. In this talk we discuss these latest results in the context of the geometry engineering program, and briefly discuss additional future measurements.