Strongly Coupled Plasmas in High-Energy Physics

Abstract

One of the main activities in high-energy and nuclear physics is the search for the so-called quark-gluon plasma, a new state of matter which should have existed a few microseconds after the Big Bang. A quark-gluon plasma consists of free color charges, i.e. quarks and gluons, interacting by the strong (instead of electromagnetic) force. Theoretical considerations predict that the critical temperature for the phase transition from nuclear matter to a quark-gluon plasma is about 150 - 200 MeV. In the laboratory such a temperature can be reached in a so-called relativistic heavy-ion collision in accelerator experiments. Using the color charge instead of the electric charge, the Coulomb coupling parameter of such a system is of the order 10 - 30. Hence the quark-gluon plasma is a strongly coupled, relativistic plasma, in which also quantum effects are important. In the present work the experimental and theoretical status of the quark-gluon plasma physics will be reviewed, emphasizing the similarities and differences with usual plasma physics. Furthermore, the mixed phase consisting of free quarks and gluons together with hadrons (e.g. pions) will be discussed, which can be regarded as a complex plasma due to the finite extent of the hadrons.