ATLAS Heavy Ion Physics Lab

Welcome to the ATLAS Heavy Ion Physics Laboratory!

We are studying one of the most exciting discoveries of recent decade, the new state of matter called the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). An extensive experimental program of Relativistic Heavy Ion (RHI) collisions carried in the leading World laboratories succeeded to achieve such high energy densities that the smallest constituents of ordinary matter, the quark bound together by a fundamental law of Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) called the law of confinement are set asymptotically free. This is the the top-most phase transition the matter can undergo reaching the temperatures of 2,500 GigaKelvin more than 100,000 times hotter than the core of the Sun. These allow physicists to create the Earthly laboratory and put the QCD to the highest scrutiny test.

The ATLAS experiment at CERN is the most sophisticated particle detector ever built.  It is also the largest one among the LHC experiments which took its first data in fall of 2009. The ATLAS experiment offers and excellent opportunity to study the QGP under new unprecedented conditions of almost 30 times more incident energy than that it is currently available at RHIC. The analysis of the physics data will allow physicists to widen the horizons of understanding of the QGP and investigate its properties under the new regime.