Contact Information
Department of Physics525 Northwestern Avenue
West Lafayette, IN
47907-2036
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Telephone:
(765) 494-2970
Fax:
(765) 494-0706
Wei Xie
Purdue University
"Exploring the Properties of the Quark Gluon Plasma with Heavy Flavor Probes"
Thursday September 06, 2012
4:00pm 203
Refreshments are served at 3:30 p.m. in Physics room 242
A new phase of matter, the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), believed to have existed in the early universe, has been explored at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab. In this phase of nuclear matter, protons and neutrons no longer exist. Instead, their constituents, quarks and gluons, exist as free entities in a large volume. The temperatures associated with the QGP are extremely high, at least 10^12 K. The RHIC experiments have revealed a surprising property: The QGP behaves like a perfect fluid rather than an ideal gas. I will discuss the recent results from the STAR experiment, in particular how we use heavy flavor (charm and bottom quark) probes to explore the properties of the QGP and future prospects.