From Cosmic Matter to the Laboratory

TL;DR

This paper discusses recent advances in studying hot, dense QCD matter through neutron star mergers and heavy ion collisions, highlighting new laboratory opportunities at the FAIR facility for exploring this exotic state.

Contribution

It introduces the potential of the FAIR facility to investigate QCD matter in laboratory settings, complementing astrophysical observations of neutron star mergers.

Findings

Conditions in neutron star mergers create extreme QCD matter.

FAIR facility will enable unprecedented experiments in high-energy nuclear physics.

The research bridges astrophysics and laboratory nuclear physics.

Abstract

The recent discovery of binary neutron star mergers has opened a new and exciting venue of research into hot and dense strongly interacting matter. For the first time this elusive state of matter, described by the theory of quantum chromo dynamics, can be studied in two very different environments. On the macroscopic scale in the collisions of neutron stars and on the microscopic scale in collisions of heavy ions at particle collider facilities. We will discuss the conditions that are created in these mergers and the corresponding high energy nuclear collisions. This includes the properties of QCD matter, i.e. the expected equation of state as well as expected chemical and thermodynamic properties of this exotic matter. To explore this matter in the laboratory - a new research prospect is available at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research, FAIR. The new facility is being constructed adjacent to the existing accelerator complex of the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research at Darmstadt/Germany, expanding the research goals and technical possibilities substantially. The worldwide unique accelerator and experimental facilities of FAIR will open the way for a broad spectrum of unprecedented research supplying a variety of experiments in hadron, nuclear, atomic and plasma physics as well as biomedical and material science which will be briefly described.