Strongly Interacting Matter Under Rotation: An Introduction

TL;DR

This paper introduces the study of vorticity in the quark-gluon plasma created in heavy-ion collisions, highlighting recent experimental advances and the potential for new insights into strongly interacting matter under rotation.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the role of vorticity in the quark-gluon plasma and discusses recent experimental findings that reveal the plasma's rotational properties.

Findings

Hyperon spin polarization measurements indicate QGP vorticity.

Recent high-statistics data enable exploration of rotational effects.

The field is expanding with new experimental and theoretical approaches.

Abstract

Ultrarelativistic collisions between heavy nuclei briefly generate the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a new state of matter characterized by deconfined partons last seen microseconds after the Big Bang. The properties of the QGP are of intense interest, and a large community has developed over several decades, to produce, measure and understand this primordial plasma. The plasma is now recognized to be a strongly-coupled fluid with remarkable properties, and hydrodynamics is commonly used to quantify and model the system. An important feature of any fluid is its vorticity, related to the local angular momentum density; however, this degree of freedom has received relatively little attention because no experimental signals of vorticity had been detected. Thanks to recent high-statistics datasets from experiments with precision tracking and complete kinemetic coverage at collider energies, hyperon spin polarization measurements have begun to uncover the vorticity of the QGP created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The injection of this new degree of freedom into a relatively mature field of research represents an enormous opportunity to generate new insights into the physics of the QGP. The community has responded with enthusiasm, and this book (to be published as a volume of Lecture Notes in Physics series by Springer) represents some of the diverse lines of inquiry into aspects of strongly interacting matter under rotation.