NPA Seminar: Deepa Thomas, The University of Texas at Austin, "Probing hot QCD matter with charm and beauty quarks"
Ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions produce a hot and dense QCD matter, called Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). Unlike in ordinary matter, quarks and gluons are not confined within short distances but can roam freely over distances larger than the hadronic scale in the state of QGP. Understanding this novel state of matter offers a new way to learn how quarks and gluons bind to form stable particles like the proton.