How to catch a perfect ave: Scientists take a closer look inside the perfect liquid
Berkeley lab research brings us closer to understanding how the universe began.
Scientists have unveiled a new formula for solving a cosmic confusion: how quark-gluon plasma evolved into nature's perfect fluid.
After a few million-millionths of a second of the Big Bang, the early universe took on a strange new state: a subatomic soup called quark-gluon plasma.
And just 15 years ago, an international team led by researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) Relative Atomic Collision (RNC) Group discovered that this quark-gluon plasma is a perfect liquid - no quark and gluons, so much proton and neutron build up. strongly added that they flow almost friction-free.
Watch the video clip that ends with a supersonic Mac wave showing the development of a delayed quark-gluon plasma. Computer simulations provide new insights into how the matter was created at the birth of the early universe. Credit: Berkeley Lab
Scientists have speculated that high-energy jets of particles fly with quark-gluon plasma একটি a droplet at speeds faster than the nucleus-sound velocity of an atom of one size and that it emits a supersonic boom, like a fast-flying jet, called a mass wave. To study the properties of these jet particles, in 2014 a team led by scientists at Berkeley Lab introduced a nuclear X-ray imaging technique called jet tomography. The results of that basic study show that these jets disperse and lose energy as they pass through the quark-gluon plasma.
But where did the journey of jet particles in quark-gluon plasma begin? A small mash wave signal called Diffusion Wake, scientists predicted, would tell you where to look. But while the energy loss was easy to notice, the Mac Wave and the scattering with it were awake.
This 2010 video describes the collision of heavy particles in a relatively heavy ion collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 2005, RHIC physicists announced that substances caused by the most powerful collisions of accelerators behave almost like perfect liquids. The properties of this fluid, quark-gluon plasma, help us to understand the properties of matter in the primordial universe. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory
Now, in a recent study published in the journal Physical Review, scientists at Berkeley Labs report new results from model simulations showing that another technique they invented, called 2D jet tomography, can help researchers find haunting signals in the wake.
“Its signal is so tiny, it's like finding a needle in a 10,000-pile haystack. "For the first time, our simulations show that anyone using 2D jet tomography can pick up tiny signals of a diffusion in quark-gluon plasma," said Jin-Nian Wang, a senior scientist at the Berkeley Lab's Department of Nuclear Science. Was part of an international team that invented 2D jet tomography techniques.
To find that supersonic needle in a pile of quark-gluon straw, the Berkeley Lab team went through millions of lead-nucleus collisions simulated in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN, and at the Brookhaven National Laboratory at the Relativistic H.V. Events. Some computer simulations for the current study were performed at the Berkeley Lab's NERSC supercomputer facility.
Wang says their unique approach "will help you get rid of all the hay in your stack - will help you focus on this needle." Jet particles have a unique shape of a supersonic signal that looks like a cone একটি behind an extended jug, like a speeding boat waking water wave. Scientists have searched for evidence of this supersonic "weak" because it tells you that there is a reduction in particles. Once the diffusion wake is located in the quark-gluon plasma, you can distinguish its signal from other particles in the background.
Their work will help experimenters at LHC and RHIC understand what signals to look for in their research to understand how quark-gluon evolved into the perfect liquid of plasma nature. "What are we made of? What was the baby universe like in a few microseconds after the Big Bang? It's still a work in progress, but the simulations of our long-awaited awakening bring us closer to answering this question," he said.
Reference: "Awaken elusive jet-induced splitting in Z / γ-jets with 2D jet tomography in high-energy heavy-ion collisions" -Nian Wang, 17 August 2021, Physical Review Paper.
DOI: 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.127.082301
Additional co-authors were Wei Chen, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Zhang Yang, Central China Normal University; Yayun He, Central China Normal University and South China Normal University; Weibo K, Berkeley Lab, and UC Berkeley; And Longyang Pang, Central China Normal University.
NERSC is a DOE office for science users at Berkeley Lab.
This work was supported by the DOE Office of Science and the Office of Nuclear Physics.