Quarks in the universe

TL;DR

This paper explores the early universe's quark-gluon plasma by studying high-energy heavy ion collisions, providing insights into QCD vacuum structure and the conditions of matter shortly after the Big Bang.

Contribution

It links experimental heavy ion collision results with the theoretical understanding of QCD vacuum structure and early universe matter formation.

Findings

Observation of quark-gluon plasma properties

Insights into QCD vacuum structure

Experimental analogs of early universe conditions

Abstract

Matter in its present form was formed when our Universe emerged from the quark-gluon phase (QGP) at about 30mus into its evolution. To explore this early period in the laboratory, we study highly excited matter formed in relativistic heavy ion collision experiments: heavy nuclei crash into each other, and form compressed and energetically excited nuclear matter, resembling in its key features the stuff which filled the early Universe. In these experiments we further explore the physics of the vacuum structure of strongly interacting gauge theory, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The common beginning for both, heavy ion collisions, and vacuum structure investigations, is the physics of the quantum electrodynamic (QED) vacuum in the presence of the supercritical external field that is formed when two highly charged heavy ions are brought together near to the Coulomb barrier in a considerably lower reaction energy collision.