Speaker
Description
Quark-gluon plasma (QGP) is a state of matter in which quarks and gluons are deconfined from hadrons. Studying this extreme state has been a major focus of high-energy nuclear physics for several decades. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in the United States has played a central role in advancing our understanding of this phase. In particular, the PHENIX (Pioneering High Energy Nuclear Interaction Experiment) experiment at RHIC has accumulated extensive data across nine collision species and nine collision energies, providing critical experimental insights into the properties of QGP under conditions of temperature and energy density similar to those found in the early universe.
Since its first operation in 2000, PHENIX has produced numerous significant results. For example, the discovery of strong elliptic flow ($v_\textrm{2}$) in non-central collisions provided important evidence for the collective behavior of QGP, suggesting that it behaves as a nearly perfect fluid with extremely low viscosity. Additionally, the observation of high transverse momentum yield suppression, commonly known as jet quenching, revealed that QGP strongly interacts with high-$p_{\rm{T}}$ partons produced in the initial stages of the collision, leading to substantial energy loss.
Although data collection was completed in 2016, the PHENIX collaboration remains highly active, continuing to extract new results from its rich dataset, including updated measurements of direct photon $v_2$ and heavy flavor production with charm and bottom quark separation.
In this presentation, we will highlight recent PHENIX results and discuss the new insights they provide into the nature of the quark-gluon plasma.
