Strongly Coupled Quark-Gluon Plasma: The Status Report

Abstract

RHIC data have shown robust collective flows, strong jet and charm quenching, and charm flow. Recently ``conical flows'' from damped jets were seen. Non-Abelian classical strongly coupled plasmas were introduced and studied via molecular dynamics, with first results for its transport (diffusion and viscosity) reported. Quantum-mechanical studies reveal the survival for $T>T_c$ of the lowest binary states, including colored ones, and also of some manybody ones such as baryons. ``Polymeric chains'' $\bar q.g.g... q$ are also bound in some range of $T$, perhaps the progenitors of the QCD strings. AdS/CFT applications advanced to a completely new level of detail: they now include studies of thermal heavy quark motion, jet quenching and even conical flow. Confinement is however still beyond simply strong coupling: its de-facto inclusion the so called AdS/QCD approach is so far added as a model, while true understanding may probably only come from further insights into the monopole dynamics.