Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics

Dear Colleagues,

A recently discovered state of nuclear matter known as the quark–gluon plasma (QGP) exists at extremely high temperatures and densities formed in relativistic heavy-ion collisions (HIC). Under such extreme conditions, the composite hadronic states dissolve into a soup of their constituents, quarks, and gluons of quantum chromo dynamics (QCD), whose dynamical properties remain a subject of intense theoretical and experimental studies. While the behavior of “colored” elementary states of QCD at short distances is well-understood through countless collider tests and a wealth of theoretical work over past decades, a first-principle picture of their long-distance evolution encoded into the microscopic mechanism of color confinement is still in its infancy, being far from a predictive formulation despite various long-standing attempts. An ongoing resurgence of measurements at world-leading experimental QCD facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL provides a wealth of new precision data sensitive to long-range, high-temperature, and high-density QCD phenomena. These data, in turn, prompt new ideas and approaches toward understanding the details of the QCD phase diagram, effects of the hot/dense medium, dynamical characteristics of the QCD ground state and QGP, and ultimately the hadronization and color confinement mechanisms. This Special Issue aims at providing a comprehensive outlook regarding these important research topics covering the current state-of-the-art vision and ideas that hopefully could shed more light on the fundamental unsolved problems of QCD in extreme conditions.

Prof. Dr. Michal Šumbera
Dr. Jana Bielcikova
Dr. Roman Pasechnik
Guest Editors

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