General Physics Questions

This is the list of questions raised during the first RHIC-II workshop in Novermber 2004. This list will be refined and completed through the work of all working groups. We try to keep it up to date.

• What is the nature of the phase transition between nuclear matter and quark matter? (How does this type of matter return to its usual forms observed in our detectors?) How does hadronization work? Is there evidence for deconfinement?

• How does the clearly evident thermodynamic character of a high energy heavy ion collision evolve from the zero entropy initial state? How does the collision thermalize so quickly?

• What are the properties of strongly coupled quark gluon plasma? Transport properties? Medium properties: Resonant states? Collision probability? Screening length?

• Is chiral symmetry restored? When in the collision and what are the effects?

• What can non-equilibrium field theory tell us about: Initial state? Is there a color glass condensate? Thermalization? Medium properties?

• What is the structure and dynamics inside the proton? What is the spin structure of the nucleon? Is parity violation important?

• Are there exotic hadrons that can be studied at RHIC II?