Title : Review of RHIC physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory

Speaker : Prof. Sonia Kabana

Abstract:

Experiments studying collisions of ultra-relativistic nuclei explore nuclear matter
under extreme conditions of density and temperature and aim to reproduce the phase
transition between partonic and hadronic matter predicted by quantum chromodynamics.
First hints of a possible phase transition have been found with the
SPS accelerator at CERN.
The experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL
lead to a number of important discoveries, establishing the formation of strongly
interacting partonic matter in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s}(NN)$=200 GeV.
We will discuss recent highlights from RHIC physics.