Highlights from BNL-RHIC 2011-2013

TL;DR

This paper reviews key experimental results from BNL RHIC between 2011 and 2013, highlighting discoveries about the quark-gluon plasma, its properties, and comparisons with LHC findings, advancing understanding of high-energy nuclear physics.

Contribution

It summarizes recent experimental findings at RHIC, including the discovery of the quark-gluon plasma as a perfect fluid and insights into its properties, with comparisons to LHC results.

Findings

Confirmation of quark-gluon plasma as a perfect fluid

Observation of quenching of heavy quarks at high transverse momentum

Measurements supporting the existence of a QCD critical point

Abstract

Highlights from Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and experiments at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are presented for the years 2011--2013. This review is a combination of lectures which discussed the latest results each year at a three year celebration of the 50th anniversary of the International School of Subnuclear Physics in Erice, Sicily, Italy. Since the first collisions in the year 2000, RHIC has provided nucleus-nucleus and polarized proton-proton collisions over a range of nucleon-nucleon c.m. energies from 7.7 to 510 GeV with nuclei from deuterium to uranium, most often gold. The objective was the discovery of the Quark Gluon Plasma, which was achieved, and the measurement of its properties, which were much different than expected, namely a `perfect fluid' of quarks and gluons with their color charges exposed rather than a gas. Topics including quenching of light and heavy quarks at large transverse momentum, thermal photons, search for a QCD critical point as well as measurements of collective flow, two-particle correlations and $J/\Psi$ suppression are presented. During this period, results from the first and subsequent heavy ion measurements at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN became available. These confirmed and extended the RHIC discoveries and have led to ideas for new and improved measurements.