Mainz 2022 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 23: Invited Talks III

HK 23.2: Invited Talk

Tuesday, March 29, 2022, 14:30–15:00, HK-H1

The initial state of the quark-gluon plasma at the intersection of hadronic and nuclear physics — •Giuliano Giacalone — ITP Heidelberg

Experiments conducted in the world's largest accelerator machines, the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), have established that by smashing heavy nuclei at high energy one produces small lumps of a fluidlike substance, namely, the hot state of strong-interaction matter, dubbed the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). The established hydrodynamic paradigm of the QGP have permitted us over the years not only to perform quantitative extractions of the transport properties of this medium from data, but also to obtain a more and more refined understanding of its initial condition. I review the current status of the initial condition of the QGP, emphasizing the outcome of state-of-the-art models and the overall picture that they yield. I discuss the progress made in the definition of observable quantities that offer a specific sensitivity to the physics of the initial state, allowing us to place stringent constraints on the parameters of initial-state Monte Carlo generators from experimental data. Such advances have established, in particular, the importance of having an accurate implementation of the structure of the colliding ions, and the nucleons therein, in such frameworks. The initial state of heavy-ion collisions provides, hence, fertile ground for new interdisciplinary connections involving different aspects of hadronic and nuclear physics across energy scales.