Colour Deconfinement in Nuclear Collisions

Abstract

QCD predicts that strongly interacting matter will undergo a transition from a state of hadronic constituents to a plasma of unbound quarks and gluons. We first survey the conceptual features of this transition and its description in finite temperature lattice QCD, before we address its experimental investigation through high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. After considering the conditions achievable in such collisions, we discuss the possible probes to check if the produced medium in its early stages was indeed deconfined. We then elaborate the method that has emerged and the results which were obtained using the most extensively studied deconfinement probe, the suppression of charmonium production. In closing, we discuss possible supporting information provided through the study of soft hadronic probes.