PH4: Introduction to Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions: The Beauty of the Partonic Many-Body Problem and Exploring the Medium with Hard Probes

label Diverse autorenew 2025-09-29, 17:01 history_edu Maria Dumitru
As early students of physics, we are sometimes taught to fear themany-body problem because it has no exact solution. As we mature, we recognize that the true beauty of nature is most often a result of many-body physics. Can we understand a rainbow using perturbative QED as the starting point? Somewhat more directly: It would be foolish to describe a rainbow starting from pQED! We now understand that the strong interactions between quarks and gluons also have a rich many-body nature that is exhibited both in the confined/cold "laboratory" of the nucleon interior and in the hot/deconfined material known as Quark-Gluon Plasma. This material exhibits multiple phases, flow patterns reminiscent of water (or more closely super-fluid Helium), and record low viscosity/entropy-density. This series of lectures it intended to reach both the introductory and advanced student by beginning from the most basic principles (theory and detector hardware) and work toward the primary results from the so-called "RHIC era". This course will be followed by a series of lectures from Dr. Andreas Morsch, who will emphasize hard probes, copious at the LHC energy, for detailed investigation of the QGP medium properties.Scattering experiments are the best way to gain information about the properties of subatomic structures: think about Rutherford's gold foil experiment to prove the existence of the atomic nucleus or deep inelastic scattering using leptons to study the inside of hadrons. The hot and dense medium created in heavy ion collisions exists ocnly for an extremely short time and in a tiny region, hence, standard scattering techniques can not be applied. However, probes generated by QCD processes in the early stage of the collisions are modified by the medium and can be used to learn about its properties. In heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's highest energy heavy ion collider, these so called "hard probes" are copiously produced. In this series of lectures you will learn how the production of these probes is calculated in perturbative QCD for proton-proton and heavy ion collisions and how the medium can modify their properties. The experimental techniques for their study will be explained. The lectures includes also an introduction to Monte Carlo methods with hands-on exercises. Recent experimental results from the LHC will be discussed.

Period
11-08-2014 - 22-08-2014 (2 weeks)

Target group
Prerequisites: Basics of Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity, C++, basic linux knowledge.

Course aim
The most important aims of the Summer School are to develop post-graduates scientific readiness and to offer students the possibility to study in a modern, scientific environment and to create connections to the international science community.



Credits
4.0 ECTS creditsObligatory attendance at lectures and demonstrations, and exam.Grading: Pass/fail

Course fee
EUR 0[Convert to USD]Participating the Summer School is free of charge, but student have to cover the costs of own travel, accommodation and meals at Jyvskyl.

Course leader
Coordinator: Prof. Jan Rak (University of Jyvskyl, Finland)Lecturers: Prof. Tom Hemmick (Stony Brook University, United States), and Dr. Andreas Morsch (ALICE Collaboration, CERN, Switzerland)

Scholarships
The 24th Jyvskyl Summer School is not able to grant any Summer School students financial support. In order to ensure your participation, we recommend that you take steps to secure your own funding, for example, by turning first to your home institution

University of Jyvaskyla Faculty of Mathematics and Science and Faculty of Information Technology
Address: Jyvaskyla Summer School, Faculty of Mathematics and Science P.O.Box 35 (YK312), FIN-40014 University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Postal code: FIN-40014
City: Jyvaskyla
Country: Finland
Website: http://www.jyu.fi/summerschool
E-mail: jss@jyu.fi
Phone: +358505818351