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

In this talk I summarize our current understanding of quarkonium states above deconfinement based on phenomenological and lattice QCD studies.

Statistical calculations within the Standard Model indicate that at extremely high densities the quarks and gluons will become deconfined, leading to a new state of matter, the so-called Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). Recently it was announced at CERN that compelling evidence has been obtained from experimental data that indeed the formation of a deconfined state has been achieved in very energetic collisions of heavy nuclei. In this presentation I will provide an overview of the ...

Heavy quarks provide a new dimension to QCD, allowing tests of fundamental theory, the nature of color confinement, and the production of new exotic multiquark states. I also discuss novel explanations for several apparently anomalous experimental results, such as the large $t \bar t$ forward-backward asymmetry observed in $p \bar p$ colisions at the Tevatron, the large rates for $\gamma$ or $Z$ plus high-$p_T$ charm jets observed at the Tevatron, the strong nuclear absorptio...

Based on the assumption of the production of deconfined quark matter, we use a quark combination model to systematically investigate hadron yields in heavy ion collisions from RHIC $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200, 130, 62.4$ GeV to SPS $E_{beam}=158, 80, 40, 30, 20 $ AGeV. We find that as the collision energy is greater than or equal to 30 AGeV the yields of various hadrons, their correlations, in particular, the observables $A=\frac{\bar{\Lambda} k^{-} p}{\Lambda k^{+} \bar{p}}$ and $B=\...

Recent results on particle production in hadronic collisions at the LHC, from proton-proton (pp) to nucleus-nucleus (AA), challenge the traditional paradigm of hadronization as a universal late-time process which can be factorized from the partonic description of the rest of the event. If the violation of this description in nuclear collisions has been accepted for long -- with several hadronic observables finding a natural interpretation assuming some form of recombination o...

The new millennium's qualitative advances in relativistic heavy ion physics are in part due to, and are in part causing, a new appreciation for quantitative rigor in both experimental and theoretical work in the field. In these proceedings for the conference-opening "pre-Summary" talk I present an annotated guide to the figures and points made in my talk.

In this work we review what we consider are, some of the most relevant results of heavy-ion physics at the LHC. This paper is not intended to cover all the many important results of the experiments, instead we present a brief overview of the current status on the characterization of the hot and dense QCD medium produced in the heavy-ion collisions. Recent exciting results which are still under debate are discussed too, leading to intriguing questions like whether we have a re...

We discuss hadron production in heavy ion collisions at RHIC. We argue that hadrons at transverse momenta P_T < 5 GeV are formed by recombination of partons from the dense parton phase created in central collisions at RHIC. We provide a theoretical description of the recombination process for P_T > 2 GeV. Below P_T = 2 GeV our results smoothly match a purely statistical description. At high transverse momentum hadron production is well described in the language of perturbativ...

Substantial advances in our understanding of several aspects of QCD have been achieved in the recent past using heavy quarks as a tool. However, many open questions still remain. These successes and puzzles are highlighted by the latest measurements of heavy quark production at the Tevatron, HERA and fixed target experiments, which will be reviewed here. Results in both open heavy flavor and heavy quarkonium production as well as evidence for new particles containing heavy qu...

The measurement of the production of particles coming from hard scattering processes covers a fundamental role in the characterization of the system formed in heavy-ion collisions, allowing to probe the microscopic processes underlying the interaction of high energy partons with the medium. An impressive amount of measurements related to jet, quarkonia, open heavy flavor, and electroweak signal production in nucleus-nucleus as well as p(d)-nucleus collisions was delivered by ...