Von der hadronischen Welt zur Ursuppe - extreme Materie im Labor
Prof. Dr. Johanna Stachel (Heidelberg)

The theory of strong interaction, Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD) predicts that at high temperature and density a new state of matter is created in which the confinement of quarks and gluons is lifted. This state which must have existed in the early universe until about 10 microseconds after the big bang is called the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). Since about 20 years experiments are conducted in the laboratory to recreate this state of matter. The understanding is that this is done by colliding heavy atomic nuclei at as high energies as possible. Initially this was done by bombarding stationary targets with beams at the BNL AGS and the CERN SPS and in 2000 the evidence mounted that indeed a new state of matter was created. Since then a dedicated colliding beam accelerator, RHIC at BNL has come into operation. The results at RHIC give very strong arguments in favor of the QGP creation but also indicate that the properties of this state may be quite different from what was initially expected. This talk will review the experimetal results and give an outlook to the future experimetal program in this field starting at the LHC in 2009.