With the large data sets of $e^+e^-$ annihilation at the $J/\psi$ and $\psi(3686)$ resonances collected by the BESIII experiment, multi-dimensional analyses utilizing polarization and entanglement can provide new insights into the production and decay properties of hyperon-antihyperon pairs. In a series of recent studies conducted at BESIII, significant transverse polarization of the...
The description of heavy quarks inside the QGP medium, especially at low momenta, remains challenging from first principles, due to large coupling strength and gluon occupation numbers. An alternative way to formulate a description in terms of perturbative degrees of freedom is the interaction of the heavy quarks with the collective excitations of the medium in the form of phonons. This...
The discovery of exotic muonic atoms, including muonic antihydrogen and muonic kaon atoms, constitutes a milestone in our ability to make and study new forms of matter. The unique environment of relativistic heavy-ion collisions, characterized by the abundant production of muons alongside other charged particles, provides a promising platform for the formation and detection of these exotic...
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has been transforming industry and science. sPHENIX, a new experiment at RHIC, has been at the cutting edge in adopting innovative generative AI to accelerate simulation, reconstruction, and analysis in a robust manner. In this talk we will highlight three recent works on (1) diffusion model based full detector full event heavy ion collision simulation...
We introduce a model-independent mechanism to merge two (or more) equations of state (EoS) by treating them as a two-fluid statistical mixture in the Grand Canonical Ensemble. The merged grand-potential density $\omega(T,\mu_B)$ is built directly from the input EoS, and the fluid fraction is fixed by minimizing $\omega$ at fixed $(T,\mu_B)$. Thermodynamic consistency is enforced across all...
We find that chiral mean-field models can produce a phase diagram with 3 critical points: the usual liquid-gas transition, deconfinement, and also a new critical point that arises from a transition from the baryon octet phase into a phase dominated by strange and resonance baryons. At the onset of this phase we find a drastic increase in strangeness since cascade baryons tend to dominate. We...
High-energy heavy-ion collisions create a quark–gluon plasma (QGP) with approximately restored chiral symmetry. Lattice QCD determines the chiral crossover temperature to be $T_c = (156.5 \pm 1.5) \, \mathrm{MeV}$, below which chiral symmetry is spontaneously broken and pions emerge as pseudo–Goldstone bosons. Yet, this chiral transition—second order in the chiral limit—is absent from current...
Accurate modeling of the space–time evolution of the quark–gluon plasma (QGP) through relativistic hydrodynamics is essential for connecting initial-state fluctuations to final-state observables and for understanding interactions between hard probes and the evolving QGP in heavy-ion collisions. However, full hydrodynamic simulations are computationally intensive, posing major challenges for...
We use the Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton model, which is based on the gravity/gauge duality framework, supplemented by Bayesian inference to calculate key transport coefficients and energy loss of the quark-gluon plasma including baryon conductivity, baryon diffusion, bulk viscosity, shear viscosity, drag force, heavy quark diffusion coefficient and jet quenching parameter. Our model is calibrated...
We present a novel Monte-Carlo implementation of the EKRT model, MC-EKRT, for computing partonic initial states in high-energy nuclear collisions [1]. Our new MC-EKRT event generator is based on collinearly factorized, dynamically fluctuating pQCD minijet production, supplemented with a saturation conjecture that controls the low-$p_T$ particle production. Previously, the EKRT model has been...
ALICE will commission the Inner Tracking System 3 (ITS3), replacing the three innermost layers of the existing vertex spectrometer during the Long Shutdown 3 (2026-30) of the LHC at CERN. It will consist of six truly cylindrical, bent, wafer-scale monolithic active pixel sensors based on the TPSCo 65 nm technology. ITS3 will have a low material budget (0.09% X0 per layer) and the innermost...
The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment is currently being constructed at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR). It is designed as a fixed target experiment to explore the QCD phase diagram in the baryon rich domain in nucleus-nucleus collisions at an unprecedented interaction rate of up to 10 MHz. This will allow the study of extremely rare probes with high precision...
NA60+/DiCE is a new experiment, proposed for data taking in the coming years, which aims to explore the high baryochemical potential region of the QCD phase diagram. NA60+/DiCE will perform a beam-energy scan with Pb–Pb and p–A collisions in the range 6 < \sqrt{s_{NN}} < 17, taking advantage of the high-intensity beams available at the CERN SPS.
The experimental apparatus comprises a vertex...
Quarkonium states, and in particular charmonium, have been recognized
as sensitive probes of the properties of hot and dense strongly
interacting matter created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Since
the pioneering work of Matsui and Satz, who proposed that the
suppression of the $J/\psi$ meson could signal the onset of quark–gluon
plasma (QGP) formation, numerous theoretical...
The ALICE Collaboration has proposed a completely new apparatus, ALICE 3, for the LHC Run 5 (LoI, arXiv:2211.02491). The detector consists of a large pixel-based tracking system covering eight units of pseudorapidity, complemented by multiple systems for particle identification, including silicon time-of-flight layers, a ring-imaging Cherenkov detector, a muon identification system, and...
