Speaker
Prof.
Michael Lisa
(Ohio State University)
Description
Over the past several years, a major component of the experimental program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has been a systematic study of heavy ion collisions over a large range of energies ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}\sim 5-200$~GeV/c). The motivation for this large-scale undertaking is to explore the phase structure of QCD matter for a range of system parameters (temperature and chemical potentials) over which nontrivial structures may emerge. These structures include a first-order phase transition at large net-baryon density and a critical point. The talk will present the current status of the experimental program and intriguing nontrivial trends in several observables that simultaneously suggest a transition in the system. Future directions in the theoretical and experimental program will also be outlined.
Primary author
Prof.
Michael Lisa
(Ohio State University)
