Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics

这个项目的目标是研究相对论原子核之间的碰撞，并最终确定在广泛的温度和密度范围内核物质的性质。宇宙中存在由核物质组成的极热或极致密的物体，然而，由于不可能直接研究中子星、超新星或大爆炸，人们求助于由核-核碰撞提供的有限和瞬变系统的挑战性研究。显然，为了理解核物态方程或确定向新的物质状态--夸克-胶子等离子体的跃迁，将需要一套全面和相关的测量以及将可观测值与核物质变量联系起来的广泛计算。这个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)上的螺线管跟踪器(STAR)实验来获取和分析这样一组数据。组成恒星实验的探测器系统的集合提供了关于个别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.