Relativistic Heavy Ion Theory

在宇宙诞生之初，也就是大爆炸后的一瞬间，现在存在的一切都被塞进了一个令人难以置信的微小空间--这个空间像气球一样以光速向各个方向膨胀。在最初的几分钟里，整个宇宙是由一种被称为夸克-胶子等离子体的物质组成的，这种物质是一团基本粒子，很快就会聚合成更大的粒子，最后是我们今天所知的原子。这项研究的重点是在纽约的相对论重离子对撞机和欧洲的大型强子对撞机上重现这些条件。这些对撞机将原子核打碎在一起，产生极少量的夸克胶子等离子体。通过使用数学模型研究这种等离子体的流体特性，我们希望解释在这些大质量对撞机上看到的情况。推而广之，这些知识将帮助我们理解早期的宇宙是什么样子的，以及它是如何形成今天的样子的。我特别兴奋能通过一个针对正在学习成为教师的学生的项目，与底特律的弱势学生分享这项研究。

At the dawn of the universe, just an instant after the Big Bang, everything that now exists was packed into an incredibly tiny space - a space that was expanding like a balloon in every direction at the speed of light. For these first few moments, the entire universe was made of a substance known as quark-gluon plasma, a soup of elementary particles that soon coalesced into the larger particles, and finally the atoms that we know today.This research focuses on the re-creation of these conditions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in New York and the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. These colliders smash nuclei together, producing tiny fleeting quantities of quark gluon plasma. By studying the fluid characteristics of this plasma using mathematical models, we hope to explain what is seen at these massive colliders. By extension, this knowledge will help us understand what the early universe was like and how it came to be what it is today. I am especially excited to be sharing this research with disadvantaged students in Detroit through a program aimed at students who are studying to become teachers.