Cooking the Quark Soup with a Supercomputer

Hadronic Matter and Quark Gluon Plasma

Hadronic Matter and Quark Gluon Plasma

The phase diagram of strongly interacting particle matter as function of temperature and baryon number density is studied theoretically in lattice calculations as well as experimentally in heavy ion collision experiments at Brookhaven, USA (RHIC) and future European accelerators at CERN, Geneva (LHC) and the GSI in Darmstadt. Current investigations of the phase diagram suggest a strong dependence of the properties of the transition on the baryon number density. While the transition is a smooth crossover at low density it is expected to be first order at high density. The two regions are separated by a second order transition point (critical point). In lattice calculations the phase diagram is being intensively studied in Germany by groups in Bielefeld and Wuppertal.