Heavy ion collisions involve large atomic nuclei, and are run at modern particle accelerators like RHIC and the LHC.
Questions tagged [heavy-ion]
27 questions
8
votes
2 answers
What is the difference between Monte Carlo Tracks and Reconstructed tracks in heavy ion collisions?
I am doing a simulation of heavy ion collision, so I want to know what is the meaning of Monte Carlo tracks, what is a reconstructed track, and also, what is the relation and difference between Monte Carlo and reconstructed tracks? What is the need…
Sudhir Rode
- 81
7
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3 answers
What is "A" in AGeV?
AGeV means GeV per nucleon. But why A letter is used for such a short cut? Why not NGeV, for example?
klm123
- 390
7
votes
1 answer
Reference on stages of heavy ion collisions in particle physics
Is there any reference (book/review article etc.) where the physics of heavy ion collisions is overviewed?
To be absolutely clear about things, I am looking for a introductory review which covers the physics aspects of the progression through the…
User Anonymous
- 415
- 3
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6
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2 answers
Advantages of high-energy heavy-ion collisions over proton-proton collisions?
Some high-energy experiments (RHIC, LHC) use ion-ion collisions instead of proton-proton collisions. Although the total center-of-mass energy is indeed higher than p-p collisions, it might happen that the total energy per nucleon is actually lower.…
jbatista
- 1,465
5
votes
1 answer
What is the "smearing" in heavy-ion collisions?
I often saw the word "smearing" in some papers. I don't know what it means. This word doesn't have an appropriate interpretation which is related to physics in chinese. So I feel hard to get the key point. How to expain it in physics?
More…
A.Luo
- 189
4
votes
1 answer
What is jet quenching and how far can the hydrodynamic analogy go?
I recently heard about jet quenching concerning data taken by the experiments at the LHC. Apparently it is related to the existence to the quark-gluon plasma. As far as I understood this interpretation is an analogy to hydrodynamics (the jet is…
Cedric H.
- 4,856
4
votes
1 answer
What energy will the LHC use for pA collisions in Run 2?
Part of the LHC's Run 2 (which just recently started) will be dedicated to proton-ion collisions, but I haven't been able to find any firm information about what energy those collisions will run at. The best information I've seen so far suggests…
David Z
- 77,804
4
votes
1 answer
What's the potential of the LHC's heavy ion experiment?
RHIC has been the dominant player in heavy ion physics, producing tantalizing evidence in support of the entropy/viscocity formula from AdS/CFT.
What's the potential of the LHC's Pb ion collsions? What can it achieve which RHIC can't? What…
felix
- 1,776
4
votes
1 answer
Hydro regime of strongly coupled field theory, low viscosity
I am trying to get an intuition for the following argument: In heavy ion collisions the central collision area can be described by almost ideal hydrodynamics at very early times after the impact. This leads to an asymmetric distribution of the final…
physicus
- 3,632
4
votes
0 answers
Baryonic density in collision experiments
Does anyone know any way of estimating the net baryon density in collision experiments, e.g. in LHC, RHIC, or the upcoming ones at GSI-FAIR?
I have comes across many hand-waving arguments, sample -
Electron-positron colliders start with $\rho_B =…
299792458
- 3,214
3
votes
1 answer
Difference between particle rapidity and space-time rapidity
I have seen a lot of posts asking about the difference between the rapidity $y$ and the pseudorapidity $\eta$, and I understand it well enough (at least in the context of heavy-ion collisions). They're defined, respectively,…
3
votes
1 answer
How many pairs of nuclei collide in heavy ion collisions?
As each bunch of heavy ions consist of a large number of nuclei it does not seem unlikely that multiple binary ion collisions will occur as it does in p-p collisions. However, should this be the case, I do not see how a possible azimuthal anisotropy…
AltLHC
- 629
2
votes
1 answer
Highest man-made temperature: why only 470 MeV?
In 2012, the ALICE experiment at CERN achieved a temperature of 5.5 trillion kelvin (5.5 × 1012 K). This was regarded as the highest man-made temperature.
However, even this temperature seems relatively low, as according to the Boltzmann constant,…
R. Paul
- 183
2
votes
1 answer
How many different experimental configurations does the Large Hadron Collider have?
I understand that the LHC can collide protons with protons, heavy ions with heavy ions, or protons with heavy ions, giving three main configurations. But, I'm wondering: is that the only property that physicists would vary in order to perform…
Daniel Griscom
- 4,098
1
vote
1 answer
What’s the basic procedure to draw a QCD phase diagram?
Could someone recommend a book/resource where I can find a detailed way of sketching out a QCD temperature-chemical potential phase diagram using gap equations (eg. equations 35-37 or 39-40 as given here)?
P.S- Other similar questions on QCD phase…
user263315
- 435