Title: Probing the QCD phase diagram using heavy-ion collision at RHIC

Speaker: Dr. Md. Nasim, UCLA

Abstract: In the standard model of particle physics, the strong force is described by the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). At ordinary temperatures or densities this force just confines the quarks into hadrons. The understanding of the nature of confinement in QCD is the subject of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics. At sufficiently high temperature and/or high baryon density, Lattice QCD predicts a transition form hadronic matter to deconfined partonic matter. Phase diagram of QCD has a rich phase structure but is still largely conjectured. My research objective is the experimental exploration of the QCD phase diagram. Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory provides a opportunity to investigate the QCD phase diagram by colliding two heavy nuclei at ultra-relativistic speed which would contain asymptotically free quarks and gluons. In this talk I will discuss recent results from STAR experiment at RHIC and its physics implication towards understanding the QCD phase diagram. I will mainly focus on bulk properties of the QCD matter: Collective phenomena.