LHC produces ‘littlest liquid’
13 Oct 2015 by Evoluted New Media
Quark-gluon plasma – a state of matter thought to have existed right at the birth of the Universe – has been produced with fewer particles than previously thought possible.
Quark-gluon plasma – a state of matter thought to have existed right at the birth of the Universe – has been produced with fewer particles than previously thought possible.
Researchers at the University of Kansas and the LHC used the supercollider's Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector and produced what scientists call the’ littlest liquid’ by colliding protons and lead nuclei.
“Before the CMS experimental results, it had been thought the medium created in a proton on lead collisions would be too small to create a quark-gluon plasma,” said Dr Quan Wang at the University of Kansas.
In the study, published in APS Physics, the team produced the liquid by colliding protons with lead nuclei at high energy inside the supercollider. They found that many of the newly formed particles are correlated to each other in proton-lead collisions, similar to what is observed in lead-lead collisions.
After producing the matter, the researchers described it as a very hot and dense state of matter of the unbound elementary particles quarks and gluons. They believe that quark-gluon plasma corresponds to the state of the Universe shortly after the Big Bang.
“This is probably the first evidence that the smallest droplet of quark-gluon plasma is produced in proton-lead collisions.”
Unexpectedly, the physicists discovered that the interaction between quarks and gluons within the newly produced matter is strong.
Dr Wang said: “While we believe the state of the universe about a microsecond after the Big Bang consisted of a quark-gluon plasma, there is still much that we don't fully understand about the properties of quark-gluon plasma.”
