Salient Features of Hadronization, Deconfinement and Heavy Quark Probes at RHIC

Quarkonium production in high-energy hadronic collisions is a useful tool to investigate fundamental aspects of Quantum Chromodynamics, from the proton and nucleus structure to deconfinement and the properties of the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). In these proceedings, emphasis is made on few recent quarkonium results from the RHIC and LHC colliders in proton-proton (pp), proton-nucleus (p-A) and nucleus-nucleus (A-A) collisions. In addition, results for some key observables are c...

At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) collisions of heavy ions at nucleon-nucleon energies of 200 GeV appear to have created a new form of matter thought to be a deconfined state of the partons that ordinarily are bound in nucleons.We discuss the evidence that a thermalized partonic medium, usually called a Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), has been produced. Then we discuss the effect of this high-density medium on the production of jets and their pair correlations. Next we ...

The results from data taken during the last several years at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) will be reviewed in the paper. Several selected topics that further our understanding of constituent quark scaling, jet quenching and color screening effect of heavy quarkonia in the hot dense medium will be presented. Detector upgrades will further probe the properties of Quark Gluon Plasma. Future measurements with upgraded detectors will be presented. The discovery persp...

Quarkonia were predicted to be suppressed in the "hot" deconfined matter known as the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), but they were also seen to suffer from "cold" nuclear matter effects (parton shadowing, nuclear absorption...). Both at SPS and RHIC, suppression beyond nuclear effects was observed, but the rapidity dependence of the RHIC result is not easy to interpret. I review here the current status of these results, their possible interpretations and the new measurements that ...

The experimental results on hadron production obtained recently at RHIC offer a new prospective on the energy dependence of the nuclear collision dynamics. In particular, it is possible that parton saturation -- the phenomenon likely providing initial conditions for the multi--particle production at RHIC energies -- may have started to set in central heavy ion collisions already around the highest SPS energy. We examine this scenario, and make predictions based on high densit...

Recent RHIC data show evidence of multiple hadron production mechanisms in heavy ion collisions compared to simple fragmentation in vacuum. I will review the measurements of collective flow, high momentum quenching, and two particle angular correlations to show that neither thermal production nor string fragmentation can describe the abundances, the angular distributions or the kinematic properties of all hadrons produced at RHIC. The proposed new hadronization mechanisms not...

A critical review on signatures of Quark-Gluon-Plasma formation is given and the current (1998) experimental status is discussed. After giving an introduction to the properties of QCD matter in both, equilibrium- and non-equilibrium theories, we focus on observables which may yield experimental evidence for QGP formation. For each individual observable the discussion is divided into three sections: first the connection between the respective observable and QGP formation in te...

Since the beginning of the efforts to produce and understand quark matter large changes developed in the ideas of description of this matter. In the present paper we summarize some aspects of this development.

Heavy ion collisions (HIC) at high energies are excellent ways for producing heavy hadrons and composite particles. With upgraded detectors at RHIC and LHC, it has become possible to measure hadrons beyond their ground states. Therefore, HIC provide a new method for studying exotic hadrons that are either hadronic molecular states or compact multiquark systems. Because their structures are related to the fundamental properties of QCD, studying exotic hadrons is currently one ...

Quarkonia (J/Psi, Psi', Upsilon) production provides a sensitive probe of gluon distributions and their modification in nuclei; and is a leading probe of the hot-dense (deconfined) matter created in high-energy collisions of heavy ions. I will discuss our current understanding of the modification of gluon distributions in nuclei and other cold-nuclear-matter effects in the context of recent p-p and p(d)-A quarkonia measurements. Then I will review the latest results for nucle...