Enhanced production of multi-strange hadrons in high-multiplicity proton-proton collisions

Straining a strange soup for lessons on our Universe

28 November 2017

Scientists have used collisions between protons to investigate strange hadrons, whose formation may provide deeper insights into the origins of our Universe, according to a study published in Nature Physics.

A few billionths of a second after the Big Bang, an extremely hot and dense primordial ‘soup’ formed from freely roaming quarks and gluons, the fundamental building blocks of the Universe. By studying the properties of this soup, known as a quark-gluon plasma, scientists can gain a better understanding into the origins of our Universe.

Using data from the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider, an international team of physicists, including researchers from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, have observed for the first time the enhanced formation of strange hadrons, particles that contain at least one strange quark, which are indicative of the formation of the quark-gluon plasma, opening up a new way to study the origins of our Universe.

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References

1. Nature Physics 13, 535–539 (2017). doi: 10.1038/nphys4111