U.S.-Korea Cooperative Research: Charmonium Cross Sections in Heavy Ion Collisions

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0327497BarnesThis award supports international research collaboration in nuclear physics by Professor Ted Barnes of the University of Tennessee, Dr. Cheuk-Yin Wong of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a US graduate student. They are working with a Profesors Su Houng Lee and Yongseok Oh of Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. They are focusing on getting first principles understanding of the production cross sections of heavy quark bound states("Quark-Gluon Plasmas") in heavy ion collisions. This will enable them to test ideas about confinement in the high energy density matter produced in heavy ion collisions. There is very little known about the production of heavy quark bound states. They occur in both high-energy nuclear physics and particle physics. The collaborators are addressing this theoretical problem using several different theoretical models. The strongly collaborative effort depends on complementary expertise in the US and Korean groups in nuclear theory and hadronic models.With the advent of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL, the nuclear physics community has begun the exploration of a new frontier of high densities and temperatures in the physics of strongly- interacting matter. One especially exciting prediction is that a new state of matter, the "quark-gluon plasma" (QGP), should be formed in central heavy-ion collisions, provided that sufficiently high energy densities and temperatures are reached and maintained. A crucial problem that has arisen in this field is the identification of "QGP signatures", that is, observations that will confirm that a QGP was indeed produced. This collaborative research addresses some of the additional "signatures" produced by heavy ion collisions that would confound the identification of true QGP signatures.Broader ImpactsThis research addresses a very important issue in the study of the Quark-Gluon Plasma phenomenon in nuclear physics. It strengthens the links between two very strong research groups in the US and Korea that have complementary expertise. It also enhances the training of young theorists in a frontier area of fundamental physics, which is important to keep the field strong..