This 2002 monograph, now reissued as OA, explores the primordial state of hadronic matter called quark-gluon plasma.

Quark-Gluon Plasma introduces the primordial matter, composed of two types of elementary particles, created at the time of the Big Bang. During the evolution of the universe, Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) undergoes a transition to hadronic matter governed by quantum chromodynamics, the law of strong interactions. After an introduction to gauge theories, various aspects of quantum chromodynamic phase transitions are illustrated in a self-contained manner. The cosmological approach and renormalization group are discussed, as well as the cosmological and astrophysical implications of QGP, on the basis of Einstein's equations. Recent developments towards the formation of QGP in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions are also presented in detail. This text is suitable as an introduction for graduate students, as well as providing a valuable reference for researchers already working in this and related fields. It includes eight appendices and over a hundred exercises.

This set of lectures deals with the transition from nuclear matter to quark matter. The reader will learn not only about the theory of quark-gluon plasmas but also how they are obtained in the laboratory through heavy-ion collisions or where they can be found in astrophysical objects such as compact stars. The book fills a gap between well-known textbook material and the research literature and is thus perfectly suited for postgraduate students who wish to enter this field, for lecturers looking for advanced material for their courses and for scientists in search of a modern source of reference on these topics.

This book shows how the study of multi-hadron production phenomena in the years after the founding of CERN culminated in Hagedorn's pioneering idea of limiting temperature, leading on to the discovery of the quark-gluon plasma -- announced, in February 2000 at CERN. Following the foreword by Herwig Schopper -- the Director General (1981-1988) of CERN at the key historical juncture -- the first part is a tribute to Rolf Hagedorn (1919-2003) and includes contributions by contemporary friends and colleagues, and those who were most touched by Hagedorn: Tamás Biró, Igor Dremin, Torleif Ericson, Marek Gaździcki, Mark Gorenstein, Hans Gutbrod, Maurice Jacob, István Montvay, Berndt Müller, Grazyna Odyniec, Emanuele Quercigh, Krzysztof Redlich, Helmut Satz, Luigi Sertorio, Ludwik Turko, and Gabriele Veneziano. The second and third parts retrace 20 years of developments that after discovery of the Hagedorn temperature in 1964 led to its recognition as the melting point of hadrons into boiling quarks, and to the rise of the experimental relativistic heavy ion collision program. These parts contain previously unpublished material authored by Hagedorn and Rafelski: conference retrospectives, research notes, workshop reports, in some instances abbreviated to avoid duplication of material, and rounded off with the editor's explanatory notes. About the editor: Johann Rafelski is a theoretical physicist working at The University of Arizona in Tucson, USA. Bor n in 1950 in Krakow, Poland, he received his Ph.D. with Walter Greiner in Frankfurt, Germany in 1973. Rafelski arrived at CERN in 1977, where in a joint effort with Hagedorn he contributed greatly to the establishment of the relativistic heavy ion collision, and quark-gluon plasma research fields. Moving on, with stops in Frankfurt and Cape Town, to Arizona, he invented and developed the strangeness quark flavor as the signature of quark-gluon plasma.

This exhaustive survey is the result of a four year effort by many leading researchers in the field to produce both a readable introduction and a yardstick for the many upcoming experiments using heavy ion collisions to examine the properties of nuclear matter. The books falls naturally into five large parts, first examining the bulk properties of strongly interacting matter, including its equation of state and phase structure. Part II discusses elementary hadronic excitations of nuclear matter, Part III addresses the concepts and models regarding the space-time dynamics of nuclear collision experiments, Part IV collects the observables from past and current high-energy heavy-ion facilities in the context of the theoretical predictions specific to compressed baryonic matter. Part V finally gives a brief description of the experimental concepts. The book explicitly addresses everyone working or planning to enter the field of high-energy nuclear physics.

From the Editors Preface: "Quark Matter 1987 was attended by about 250 scientists, representing 75 research institutions around the world - the scientific community engaged in experimental and theoretical studies of high energy nuclear collisions. The central theme of the meeting was the possibility of achieving extreme energy densities in extended systems of strongly interacting matter - with the ultimate aim of creating in the laboratory a deconfined state of matter, a state in which quarks and gluons attain the active degrees of freedom. High energy accelerator beams and cosmic radiation projectiles provide the experimental tools for this endeavour; on the theoretical side, it is intimately connected to recent developments in the non-perturbative study of quantum chromodynamics. Phase transitions between hadronic matter and quark-gluon plasma are of basic interest also for our understanding of the dynamics of the early universe ... A very special feature of this Sixth Quark Matter Conference was the advent of the first experimental results from dedicated accelerator studies. These were conducted during 1986/87 at the AGS of Brookhaven National Laboratory ... and at the CERN SPS ... An intense discussion of these data formed the main activity of the meeting.

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.