Speaker
Prof.
Vincenzo Greco
(Universita degli Studi di Catania)
Description
Matter around us is made of protons and neutrons giving the mass to atomic nuclei and interacting by Strong interaction, one of the four “fundamental forces”. The theory of Strong interaction challenges our standard notion of vacuum and leads to unusual features like a force increasing with particle distance, at variance with the other known “forces”. However, at temperatures above two Trillion degrees (2 *10^12 °K) it predicts that nuclear matter becomes a plasma of quarks and gluons. Hence the last would be the matter that permeated the Early Universe in the first microseconds after the Big-Bang and that can now be created on the Earth by mean of ultra-relativistic collisions.
We are now able to study with a precision beyond expectations the properties of this hot matter that produced strongly out-of-equilibrium is able to thermalize in about 10^-23 seconds behaving like a nearly perfect fluid.
Primary author
Prof.
Vincenzo Greco
(Universita degli Studi di Catania)
