The Next Decade of Physics with PHENIX

TL;DR

This paper reviews a decade of RHIC and LHC heavy ion physics, discusses key unanswered questions about quark-gluon plasma and parton distributions, and outlines PHENIX upgrade plans to address these issues.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive evaluation of past discoveries and proposes experimental upgrades to explore new fundamental questions in high-energy nuclear physics.

Findings

Decade of data from RHIC and LHC has advanced understanding of quark-gluon plasma.

Identification of key unanswered questions about strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma.

Development of upgrade plans for the PHENIX experiment to address these questions.

Abstract

The first decade of RHIC physics and the first heavy ion running at the LHC have produced a wealth of data and discoveries. It is timely to now evaluate what has been learned and ask what compelling new questions have been raised. In this talk, several key unanswered questions about the properties of the strongly coupled quark gluon plasma and the distribution of partons inside nucleons and nuclei will be discussed along with how they can be addressed experimentally. The PHENIX Collaboration has developed a plan for upgrading the experiment in order to address these new questions. The current status of these plans will be presented.