Papers of the June 1989 meeting in Beijing by the China Center of Advanced Science and Technology. This small book covers nucleus- nucleus collisions, states of the vacuum, and highly relativistic heavy ions in the experimental realm. Theoretical papers deal with quark-gluon plasma, and relativistic heavy ion collisions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The phase structure of particle physics shows up in matter at extremely high densities and/or temperatures as they were reached in the early universe, shortly after the big bang, or in heavy-ion collisions, as they are performed nowadays in laboratory experiments. In contrast to phase transitions of condensed matter physics, the underlying fundamental theories are better known than their macroscopic manifestations in phase transitions. These theories are quantum chromodynamics for the strong interaction part and the electroweak part of the Standard Model for the electroweak interaction. It is their non-Abelian gauge structure that makes it a big challenge to predict the type of phase conversion between phases of different symmetries and different particle contents. The book is about a variety of analytical and numerical tools that are needed to study the phase structure of particle physics. To these belong convergent and asymptotic expansions in strong and weak couplings, dimensional reduction, renormalization group studies, gap equations, Monte Carlo simulations with and without fermions, finite-size and finite-mass scaling analyses, and the approach of effective actions as supplement to first-principle calculations.

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.

Annotation. Text reviews the major topics in Quark-Gluon Plasma, including: the QCD phase diagram, the transition temperature, equation of state, heavy quark free energies, and thermal modifications of hadron properties. Includes index, references, and appendix. For researchers and practitioners.

The physics of strongly interacting matter in an external magnetic field is presently emerging as a topic of great cross-disciplinary interest for particle, nuclear, astro- and condensed matter physicists. It is known that strong magnetic fields are created in heavy ion collisions, an insight that has made it possible to study a variety of surprising and intriguing phenomena that emerge from the interplay of quantum anomalies, the topology of non-Abelian gauge fields, and the magnetic field. In particular, the non-trivial topological configurations of the gluon field induce a non-dissipative electric current in the presence of a magnetic field. These phenomena have led to an extended formulation of relativistic hydrodynamics, called chiral magnetohydrodynamics. Hitherto unexpected applications in condensed matter physics include graphene and topological insulators. Other fields of application include astrophysics, where strong magnetic fields exist in magnetars and pulsars. Last but not least, an important new theoretical tool that will be revisited and which made much of the progress surveyed in this book possible is the holographic principle - the correspondence between quantum field theory and gravity in extra dimensions. Edited and authored by the pioneers and leading experts in this newly emerging field, this book offers a valuable resource for a broad community of physicists and graduate students.

This new volume, I/23, of the Landolt-Börnstein Data Collection series continues a tradition inaugurated by the late Editor-in-Chief, Professor Werner Martienssen, to provide in the style of an encyclopedia a summary of the results and ideas of Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics. Formerly, the Landolt-Börnstein series was mostly known as a compilation of numerical data and functional relations, but it was felt that the more comprehensive summary undertaken here should meet an urgent purpose. Volume I/23 reports on the present state of theoretical and experimental knowledge in the field of Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics. What is meant by this rather technical terminology is the study of strongly interacting matter, and its phases (in short QCD matter) by means of nucleus-nucleus collisions at relativistic energy. The past decade has seen a dramatic progress, and widening of scope in this field, which addresses one of the chief remaining open frontiers of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and, in a wider sense, the "Standard Model of Elementary Interactions". The data resulting from the CERN SPS, BNL AGS and GSI SIS experiments, and in particular also from almost a decade of experiments carried out at the "Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider"(RHIC) at Brookhaven, have been fully analyzed, uncovering a wealth of information about both the confined and deconfined phases of QCD at high energy density.