Phases of Quantum Chromodynamics at Extremes

by Prof. Chihiro Sasaki (Uni Wroclaw)

Tuesday 4 Dec 2018, 14:00 → 15:30 Europe/Budapest

Meeting room (KFKI campus Bdg 1)

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is a non-abelian gauge theory to describe strong forces
and is embodied in the Standard Model. The particle-mass generation has a crucial
impact over the formation of matter in the Universe after the Big Bang. Spontaneous
chiral symmetry breaking generates a large part of the nucleon mass. Simultaneously, the
elementary particles of QCD, quarks and gluons, are confined inside their composite states,
hadrons. Those non-perturbative phenomena are traced back to the strong QCD interaction
in low energy. 

The current and future experiments using high-energy proton-proton and nucleus-nucleus
collisions create a process backward in time, i.e. toward the early Universe. Heavy-ion
collision experiments create a hot/dense QCD matter that exhibits quite different properties
from the known ground state at low temperature and density. The interior of compact
objects in the Universe, such as neutron stars, is another testing ground of QCD at high
density.

I will give a brief overview on QCD thermodynamics and present recent developments
on selected issues.

Wigner_Coll_Sasaki.pdf