The Mini-bang : Search for the Quark Gluon Plasma

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The Mini-bang Search for the Quark Gluon Plasma
Virtual Journey from the Big-Bang to the
Mini-Bang.
MDAPT Meeting at Wayne State University, March
20, 2002
Prof. Claude Pruneau Wayne State University
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The Night Sky

• The Stars
• And the wanderers
• The planets
• What else ?

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Mosaic of 51 wide-angle photographs. Made over a
three year period from locations in California
(USA), South Africa, and Germany, the individual
pictures were digitized and stitched together to
create an apparently seamless 360 by 180 degree
view.
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Virgo Cluster
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Increasing Red Shift With Increasing Distance
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Doppler Effect
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Doppler Effect of light from moving Stars
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The further apart galaxies are, the faster they
move away from one another.
Expanding Universe
Expanding Universe
Expanding Universe
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Fornax cluster barred spiral galaxy NGC1365

HST Picture Identification of 50 Cepheids
variable stars
Wendy Freedman et al.(Carnegie Observatories),
HST Key Project Team, and NASA

• Measurements of Hubble Expansion
• Hubble Constant 70 km/sec/mpc (10)
• Galaxies appear to be moving 160,000 miles per
  hour faster for every 3.3 million light-years
  away from Earth.

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Big Bang Model
A broadly accepted theory for the origin and
evolution of our universe.
It postulates that 12 to 14 billion years ago,
the portion of the universe we can see today was
only a few millimeters across. It has since
expanded from this hot dense state into the vast
and much cooler cosmos we currently inhabit.
In the beginning, there was a Big Bang, a
colossal explosion from which everything in the
Universe sprung out.
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Experimental Evidence of the Big Bang

• Expansion of the universe
• Edwin Hubble's 1929 observation that galaxies
  were generally receding from us provided the
  first clue that the Big Bang theory might be
  right.
• Abundance of the light elements H, He, Li
• The Big Bang theory predicts that these light
  elements should have been fused from protons and
  neutrons in the first few minutes after the Big
  Bang.
• The cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation
• The early universe should have been very hot. The
  cosmic microwave background radiation is the
  remnant heat leftover from the Big Bang.

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Cosmic Microwave Background
99.97 of the radiant energy of the Universe was
released within the first year after the Big Bang
itself and now permeate space in the form of a
thermal 3 K radiation field.
COBE CMB Measurement
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• CMB spectrum is that of a nearly perfect
  blackbody with a temperature of 2.725 /- 0.002
  K.
• Observation matches predictions of the hot Big
  Bang theory extraordinarily well.
• Deviation from perfect black body spectrum less
  than 0.03
• Nearly all of the radiant energy of the Universe
  was released within the first year after the Big
  Bang.

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How did we get from there to here?
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Time
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What is Matter Made Of?

• Fire
• Water
• Earth
• Air
• that is, according to the Greeks!

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Click an element for more information
Mendeleevs Periodic Table of Elements
Groups are noted by 3 notation conventions.
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What is Matter Made Of?
An atom contains a nucleus...
which contains protons and neutrons...
which contain up and down quarks.
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Elementary Particles
Quarks are confined (hadrons)...
Set the Quarks Free !!!
and gluons are the guards...
How? Create a Quark-Gluon Plasma !
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Quarks Flavors and Families
light and abundant
very heavy, very rare
heavier, rare
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What is a Quark-Gluon Plasma?
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Phase Transitions
ICE
WATER
STEAM
Add heat
Add heat
Quark Gluon Plasma is another phase of matter!
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Phases of Water
Pressure
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How to Create a Quark-Gluon Plasma
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How to create a Quark-Gluon Plasma
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Quark Gluon Plasma
RHIC Collision
Quark-Gluon Plasma
Key
Quarks
Gluons
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RHIC Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
Long Island
New YorkCity
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, NY
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The RHIC Complex
1. Tandem Van de Graaff 2. Heavy Ion Transfer
Line 3. Booster 4. Alternating Gradient
Synchrotron (AGS) 5. AGS-to-RHIC Transfer
Line 6. RHIC ring
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3
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1
2
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Inside the RHIC Ring

• Underground tunnel
• Super-conducting magnets cooled by liquid helium
  (_at_ 4.5 K)
• 1740 Magnets
• 2.4 Mile circumference

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RHIC Beam Collisions

• Gold nuclei
• Traveling at near light speed
• 99.995 actually
• Hit head-on
• Crash through each other
• Release shower of particles

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RHIC Beam Collisions
Approach Collision Particle Shower
Collision time 10-22 seconds
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Actual RHIC Collisions
Each collision produces thousands of particles!
Collision measured in the Star Detector
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Measuring RHIC Collisions
Four complementary experiments
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Whos Involved in RHIC?
People from around the world
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The STAR Experiment
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Star Experiment (Construction)
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WSU Relativistic Heavy Ion Group
Faculty Rene Bellwied Tom Cormier Sean
Gavin Claude Pruneau Sergei Voloshin
Students Maria Castro Alex Stolpovsky David
Bower Saumitra Chowdhury Mohamed
Abdel-Aziz Vishist Mandapaka 5 recent graduates
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Wayne State Contribution to STAR/RHIC
Silicon Vertex Tracker (SVT)
Electromagnetic Calorimeter (EMC)
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Charged particles produced in a Single Au Au
collision at an energy of 130 A GeV (25.6 TeV)
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STAR TPC
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Pad readout

• 212 super-sectors

190 cm
Outer sector 6.2 19.5 mm2 pad 3940 pads
Inner sector 2.85 11.5 mm2 pad 1750 pads
127 cm
60 cm
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Pixel Pad Readout
Readout arranged like the face of a clock - 5,690
pixels per sector
JT 48 The Berkeley Lab
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Momentum Measurement
B0.5 T
p
Radius R
Trajectory is a helix in 3D a circle in the
transverse plane
Collision Vertex
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Multiplicity
dNh-/d??0 280?1?20 dNch/d??0 567
?1?38 38 ? pp 52 ? SPS
Multiplicity dominated by Geometry Relatively
flat in ? (?1.) Centrality Consistent with other
experiments
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Transverse Spectra
ltptgt0.508?0.012GeV/c (top 5), increases from
pp, SPS
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ltptgt Scaling
STAR Preliminary
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Proton, Anti-proton
STAR Preliminary

• Small PID range
• Finite Baryon Stopping
• Low net baryon density
• High total baryon production

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?p/p ratio
STAR
RHIC 1/3 from transport 2/3 proton from
production (how?) (AGS 10-4 SPS 1/10) Small
centrality dependence ?Small effect of ?p
absorption?
NA44
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Antinuclei
Coalescence
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Results

• Very high temperature achieved
• Collective/hydrodynamic flow
• Saturation of strange particle production.
• Modification of matter properties.
• Accumulating evidence that a new phase of
  matter is produced in AuAu collisions.

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Conclusions

• A virtual journey from our solar system outward
  towards to distant galaxies and backward in time
  to the big bang.
• QGP existed for a time of 1 micro-second after
  the big-bang.
• Production of QGP studied at BNL in high energy
  gold on gold collisions.
• Exciting results and preliminary evidence of a
  new form of matter.

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RHIC Web Pages
rhic15.physics.wayne.edu www.rhic.bnl.gov
www.star.bnl.gov