The Flavours of the Quark-Gluon Plasma

Abstract

Quarks of other flavours than up and down, i.e. $s$, $c$, and $b$ quarks, have been long recognized as effective probes of the structure of hot QCD matter. In this talk, I review some of the motivations for their investigation and discuss the salient results obtained so far, with a focus on the results from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Some ideas for future studies are also mentioned.