Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics

该项目的目标是研究相对论性原子核之间的碰撞，并最终确定核物质在广泛温度和密度范围内的性质。由核物质构成的极热或极密的物体存在于宇宙中，然而，由于没有直接研究中子星、超新星或大爆炸的可能性，人们只能求助于核-核碰撞提供的有限系统和瞬态系统的具有挑战性的研究。很明显，为了理解核状态方程或确定向新的物质状态，夸克-胶子等离子体的过渡，将需要一套全面和相关的测量以及将可观测到的与核物质变量联系起来的广泛计算。该项目的重点是利用位于布鲁克海文国家实验室的相对论重离子对撞机（RHIC）上的RHIC （STAR）实验的螺线管跟踪器获取和分析这样一组数据。组成STAR实验的探测器系统集合提供了关于单个碰撞事件的详细信息。UCD小组将使用来自这些探测器的数据来重建事件，并从记录的碎片中推断碰撞的动力学和热力学。

The goal of this project is the study of collisions between relativistic nuclei and ultimately the determination of the properties of nuclear matter over a wide range of temperatures and densities. Extremely hot or dense objects which are made of nuclear matter exist in the cosmos, however, without the possibility direct study of neutron stars, supernovae, or the Big Bang, one resorts to the challenging studies of finite and transient systems as provided by nucleus-nucleus collisions. It has become clear that in order to understand the nuclear equation of state or to identify a transistion to a new state of matter, the quark-gluon plasma, it will require a comprehensive and correlated set of measurements as well as extensive calculations which relate the observables to the nuclear matter variables. This project focuses on the acquisition and analysis of such a set of data using the Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC (STAR) experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) located at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The collection of detector systems which make up the STAR experiment provide detailed information about individual collision events. The UCD group will use data from these detectors to reconstruct the events and infer, from the recorded debris, both the dynamics and the thermodynamics of the collision.