Physical Society Colloquium

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Lab is scheduled to start taking data in December 1999. The experiments will study collisions of Gold ions at energy of 100 GeV per nucleon in the center of mass system. I will overview the theoretical work that has motived the upcoming RHIC program and illustrate a range of predictions for novel observables in such reactions. A goal of RHIC is to create a new ultra-dense phase of QCD matter, called the quark gluon plasma, and to observe its properties using pion and kaon interferometry, longitudinal and transverse collective flow measures, high p_T and charm quark probes, and strange baryon yields for example.

Friday, October 1st 1999, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Keys Auditorium (room 112)