Can We Discover the QCD Critical Point at RHIC

摘要

In this dcoument the matter produced in top-energy RHIC experiments, as it cools, undergoes a rapid cross-over from quark gluon plasma to a hadron gas, but does not undergo a first-order phase transition. Direct evidence for a first-order phase transition, and measurement of the existence and properties of the critical point, would provide an essential quantitative understanding of the phase diagram, and would be a major step forward in the effort to determine the properties of QCD at high temperature and density. This workshop brought leading theorists in the field together with experimentalists from the SPS, the RHIC program, and the planned FAIR facility, along with RHIC accelerator scientists, to examine the current understanding from data and theory, and to see if an experimental search should be carried out with the RHIC colliding beams and the PHENIX and STAR detectors.