title: The exploration of hot nuclear matter.
abstract: When nuclear matter is heated beyond 2 trillion degrees, it becomes a strongly coupled plasma of quarks and gluons. Experiments using highly energetic collisions between heavy nuclei have revealed that this new state of matter is a nearly ideal, highly opaque liquid. A description based on string theory and black holes in five dimensions has made the quark-gluon plasma an archetypical strongly coupled quantum system. Open questions about the structure and theory of the quark-gluon plasma are under active investigation. Many of the insights are also relevant to ultracold fermionic atoms and strongly correlated condensed matter.
authors: Department of Physics and Astronomy, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA.
authors: Barbara V
authors: BV
authors: Jacak
authors: Berndt
authors: B
authors: Müller