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Particle physics

Liberating quarks and gluons

Nature volume 391, pages 330–331 (1998)Cite this article

An extraordinary new state of matter, the quark-gluon plasma, may have been produced. In collisions between high-energy heavy nuclei, conditions like those 0.01 seconds after the Big Bang are reproduced — though only on a small scale and briefly. Temperatures of 1012 K or more are achieved, roughly ten million times that at the surface of the Sun, or ten thousand times that in the solar core. Theorists predict that under these conditions there is a drastic change in the structure of nuclear matter. The usual description in terms of baryons (such as protons and neutrons) and mesons (such as pions) must be abandoned in favour of a description involving the truly fundamental particles, quarks and gluons. Experiments last year have provided the first substantial evidence that such a change in fact occurs1,2,3.

To put these developments in perspective, let me sketch some of the background. Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the modern theory of the strong interaction4 — the most powerful force of nature, responsible for holding atomic nuclei together, and for most of what goes on in high-energy accelerators. QCD is verified by dozens or perhaps hundreds of experimental tests5,6. But it is a most peculiar theory: its fundamental particles, the quarks and gluons, have never been observed in isolation. Indeed, the theory predicts that they never will be.

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Figure 1: Realization of quarks and gluons as jets.
Figure 2: Confinement and deconfinement.

References

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  1. the School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study, Olden Lane, Princeton, 08540, New Jersey, USA

    Frank Wilczek

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Wilczek, F. Liberating quarks and gluons. Nature 391, 330–331 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/34778

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