Title: The glue that binds us all: lifting the veil on emergent universal dynamics in nature's strong force at high energies

Speaker: Prof. Raju Venugopalan, Brookhaven National Laboratory

Abstract: Massless gluons are responsible for nearly all of the mass of the visible universe. After a brief survey of their remarkable properties, we outline how gluon matter at high energies can be described by a strongly correlated many-body theory with universal dynamics that bears striking parallels to systems in statistical mechanics and to a memory effect carried by gravitational waves. When heavy nuclei collide at ultra relativistic energies, Weibel-like instabilities drive the matter to decohere and flow to a nonthermal fixed point before forming a perfect fluid on parametrically long time scales. This nonthermal fixed point of the hottest terrestrial fluid (T= trillion Kelvin) is universal and can be quantum simulated by cold atomic gases (T=nano Kelvin).