This is a review volume containing articles written by experts on current theoretical topics in the subject of Quark-Gluon Plasma created in heavy-ion collisions at high energy. It is the fourth volume in the series with the same title sequenced numerically. The articles are written in a pedagogical style so that they can be helpful to a wide range of researchers from graduate students to mature physicists who have not worked previously on the subject. A reader should be able to learn from the reviews without having extensive knowledge of the background literature.

This book attempts to cover the fascinating field of physics of relativistic heavy ions, mainly from the experimentalist's point of view. After the introductory chapter on quantum chromodynamics, basic properties of atomic nuclei, sources of relativistic nuclei, and typical detector set-ups are described in three subsequent chapters. Experimental facts on collisions of relativistic heavy ions are systematically presented in 15 consecutive chapters, starting from the simplest features like cross sections, multiplicities, and spectra of secondary particles and going to more involved characteristics like correlations, various relatively rare processes, and newly discovered features: collective flow, high pT suppression and jet quenching. Some entirely new topics are included, such as the difference between neutron and proton radii in nuclei, heavy hypernuclei, and electromagnetic effects on secondary particle spectra.Phenomenological approaches and related simple models are discussed in parallel with the presentation of experimental data. Near the end of the book, recent ideas about the new state of matter created in collisions of ultrarelativistic nuclei are discussed. In the final chapter, some predictions are given for nuclear collisions in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), now in construction at the site of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva. Finally, the appendix gives us basic notions of relativistic kinematics, and lists the main international conferences related to this field. A concise reference book on physics of relativistic heavy ions, it shows the present status of this field.

This comprehensive volume summarizes and structures the multitude of results obtained at the LHC in its first running period and draws the grand picture of today’s physics at a hadron collider. Topics covered are Standard Model measurements, Higgs and top-quark physics, flavour physics, heavy-ion physics, and searches for supersymmetry and other extensions of the Standard Model. Emphasis is placed on overview and presentation of the lessons learned. Chapters on detectors and the LHC machine and a thorough outlook into the future complement the book. The individual chapters are written by teams of expert authors working at the forefront of LHC research.

This book gives an introduction to main ideas used in the physics of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The links between basic theoretical concepts (discussed gradually from the elementary to more advanced level) and the results of experiments are outlined, so that experimentalists may learn more about the foundations of the models used by them to fit and interpret the data, while theoreticians may learn more about how different theoretical ideas are used in practical applications. The main task of the book is to collect the available information and establish a uniform picture of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The properties of hot and dense matter implied by this picture are discussed comprehensively. In particular, the issues concerning the formation of the quark-gluon plasma in present and future heavy-ion experiments are addressed.

This concise primer reviews the latest developments in the field of jets. Jets are collinear sprays of hadrons produced in very high-energy collisions, e.g. at the LHC or at a future hadron collider. They are essential to and ubiquitous in experimental analyses, making their study crucial. At present LHC energies and beyond, massive particles around the electroweak scale are frequently produced with transverse momenta that are much larger than their mass, i.e., boosted. The decay products of such boosted massive objects tend to occupy only a relatively small and confined area of the detector and are observed as a single jet. Jets hence arise from many different sources and it is important to be able to distinguish the rare events with boosted resonances from the large backgrounds originating from Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). This requires familiarity with the internal properties of jets, such as their different radiation patterns, a field broadly known as jet substructure. This set of notes begins by providing a phenomenological motivation, explaining why the study of jets and their substructure is of particular importance for the current and future program of the LHC, followed by a brief but insightful introduction to QCD and to hadron-collider phenomenology. The next section introduces jets as complex objects constructed from a sequential recombination algorithm. In this context some experimental aspects are also reviewed. Since jet substructure calculations are multi-scale problems that call for all-order treatments (resummations), the bases of such calculations are discussed for simple jet quantities. With these QCD and jet physics ingredients in hand, readers can then dig into jet substructure itself. Accordingly, these notes first highlight the main concepts behind substructure techniques and introduce a list of the main jet substructure tools that have been used over the past decade. Analytic calculations are then provided for several families of tools, the goal being to identify their key characteristics. In closing, the book provides an overview of LHC searches and measurements where jet substructure techniques are used, reviews the main take-home messages, and outlines future perspectives.