Scientists create quark gluon plasma (QGP) in labs to understand its transition to hadrons and its role in quantum chromodynamics, using new methods like the maximum entropy principle to interpret experimental data and map the QCD phase diagram.
Quark gluon plasma (QGP) is an exciting state of matter that scientists create in a laboratory by colliding two heavy nuclei. These collisions produce a QGP fireball. The fireball expands and cools following the laws of hydrodynamics, which govern how fluids behave in various conditions.
Eventually, subatomic particles (protons, pions, and other hadrons, or particles made up of two or more quarks) emerge and are observed and counted by detectors surrounding the collision. Fluctuations in the number of these particles from collision to collision carry important information about the QGP.
However, extracting this information from what scientists can observe is a difficult task. An approach called the maximum entropy principle provides a crucial connection between these experimental observations and the hydrodynamics of the QGP fireball.
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