Matter under extreme conditions: The theory of relativistic nuclear collisions

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My research program aims to provide quantitative characterization of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) now observed at two major accelerator facilities: RHIC (the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, Brookhaven National Laboratory), and at the LHC (the Large hadron Collider, CERN). Colliding large nuclei at relativistic energies is the only practical way to produce and study hot and dense strongly interacting matter in terrestrial laboratories. The program seeks to elucidate the bulk properties of QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics) in and out of equilibrium. The short term goals involve complementary aspects. One of them concerns soft hadronic probes and their connection to the determination of transport coefficients of QCD, which in turn regulate and quantify departures from equilibrium. More specifically, we seek to isolate the shear and bulk viscosity coefficients of QCD, together with their temperature-dependence. This knowledge is important also in the study of dense stellar objects, and of their formation. Another aspect concerns penetrating probes, as we seek to understand the emission of real and virtual photons from the QGP. These carry important information on the early-time dynamics of the nuclear collision, and can - with the help of a realistic time-evolution scenario - act literally as thermometers and as viscometers for the different phases of QCD spanned by the collision dynamics. The program involves different aspects of field theories at finite temperatures and densities, and of advanced numerical modelling.