Heavy Ions

The Heavy Ion subprogram investigates the high temperature frontier of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), by trying to recreate and characterize new forms of matter and other new phenomena that might occur in extremely hot, dense nuclear matter, such as the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), and which have not existed since the Big Bang. Measurements are carried out primarily using relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). Participation in the heavy ion program at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) provides U.S. researchers the opportunity to search for new properties of the QGP under substantially different collision conditions than those provided by RHIC, providing information regarding the matter that existed during the infant universe. This subprogram also supports advanced detector R&D, instrumentation development as well as scientific research to exploit NP’s next new accelerator facility called the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) at BNL. The EIC will be a discovery machine for unlocking the secrets of the "glue" that binds the building blocks of visible matter in the universe.