Temperature measurement of Quark-Gluon plasma at different stages

In a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), the fundamental building blocks of matter, quarks and gluons, are under extreme conditions of temperature and density. A QGP could exist in the early stages of the Universe, and in various objects and events in the cosmos. The thermodynamic and hydrodynamic properties of the QGP are described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and can be studied in heavy-ion collisions. Despite being a key thermodynamic parameter, the QGP temperature is still poorly known. Thermal lepton pairs (e<sup>+</sup>e<sup>-</sup> and μ<sup>+</sup>μ<sup>-</sup>) are ideal penetrating probes of the true temperature of the emitting source, since their invariant-mass spectra suffer neither from strong final-state interactions nor from blue-shift effects due to rapid expansion. Here we measure the QGP temperature using thermal e<sup>+</sup>e<sup>-</sup> production at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The average temperature from the low-mass region (in-medium ρ<sup>0</sup> vector-meson dominant) is (2.01 ± 0.23) × 10<sup>12</sup> K, consistent with the chemical freeze-out temperature from statistical models and the phase transition temperature from Lattice QCD. The average temperature from the intermediate mass region (above the ρ<sup>0</sup> mass, QGP dominant) is significantly higher at (3.25 ± 0.60) × 10<sup>12</sup> K. This work provides essential experimental thermodynamic measurements to map out the QCD phase diagram and understand the properties of matter under extreme conditions.

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Publication Details

Journal
Nature Communications
Published
2025-10-14
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-63216-5
Citations
3
Primary Topic
High-Energy Particle Collisions Research
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article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
5.61

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article

Temperature measurement of Quark-Gluon plasma at different stages

A. Dhamija, S. K. Tripathy, P. Tribedy, X. Wang et al.
3 citations
Nature Communications
High-Energy Particle Collisions Research
5.61
article

Temperature measurement of Quark-Gluon plasma at different stages

A. Dhamija, S. K. Tripathy, P. Tribedy, X. Wang, A. S. Nain, D. Torres Valladares, Brian C. Schaefer, Y. Hu, G. Dale-Gau, J. Luo, A. Bhasin, J. Pluta, Dike Chen, W. Guryn, S. Sato, T. L. Protzman, G. Odyniec, J. Kołaś, L. Holub, D. Zhang, Z. W. Sweger, C. Larson, S. Kabana, N. R. Sahoo, G. Wilks, N. Sharma, C. Zhang, D. Wielanek, M. Robotkova, H. J. Crawford, M. Żurek, Xinqiao Dong, W. Zhang, R. Reed, J. H. Thomas, N. Schmitz, X. Gou, L. Yi, J. S. Wang, D. P. Kikoła, Ashok Priyadarshan Dimri, S. Behera, Jaideep Singh, Taotao Fu, P. Seyboth, T. Nonaka, Z. Li, V. Bairathi, B. A. Trzeciak, M. Isshiki, Y. V. Khyzhniak, S. Singha, C. Y. Tsang, H. Li, J. Zhang, Sayan Prodhan, A. Deshpande, W. Li, R. Licenik, X. Ju, K. Okubo, M. D. Harasty, C. Naim, Neerja Jindal, Seth J. Corey, M. Przybycień, Y. F. Han, B. Kórodi, Q. Hu, I. M. Deppner, I. Chakaberia, S. R. Bhosale, B. R. Pokhrel, J. Atchison, E. Duckworth, K. Gopal, R. Lacey, B. Xi, J. C. Webb, B. Mohanty, S. Paul, G. Liu, C. W. Robertson, T. Huang, S. Sambyal, S. Yang, J. Wu, J. L. Drachenberg, D. Shen, C. Racz, Z. Zhang, S. B. Oh, Qinyu Chen, I. Aggarwal, H. Z. Huang, Y. Zhang, G. Nigmatkulov, H. Liu, J. Cheng, D. Pawlowska, H. Li, Y. G., Guangming Xie, Xinhe Bao, X. Z. Cai, J. Bielcikova, F. A. Flor, R. Manikandhan, Metin Kesler, D. Y. Shen, D. Kincses, N. Smirnov, R. Witt, Y. Söhngen, S. M. Gibson, John E. Tyler, Z. Wang, Yang Yu, K. H. Kang, H. Sako, O. Eyser, C. Fu, S. Harabasz, L. Adamczyk, K. Shen, Yan Gao, Richard Hamilton, N. K. Pruthi, R. Sharma, D. Grosnick, Chengzhi Hu, Y. Fisyak, I. Vassiliev, X. Zhang, Ying Zhou, A. C. Tamis, J. Jia, R. Seto, T. Pani, W. Xu, A. Jentsch, A. K. Sahoo, A. G. Knospe, Yi Ji, Z. Xu, K. Barish, J. Ceska, M. Stefaniak, J. Zhao, Suojun Zhang, A. Paul, Z. Chen, L. Liu, Z. Tang, I. Kisel, X. Han, A. Prozorov, D. Keane, P. Sinha, P. Bhagat, O. Matonoha, S. Fazio, B. E. Aboona, Yang Su, T. Shao, E. Finch, M. Šumbera, H. Z. Huang, E. Loyd, J. K. Sandhu, M. Sharma, R. L. Ray, Ajay Rana, Y. H. Leung, T. Niida, J. C. Dunlop, O. Lomicky, O. Evdokimov, F. Si, P. Chowdhury, A. Pandav, Z. Chang, Yanting Feng, P. Dixit, H. Harrison-Smith, M. C. Labonte, O. Mezhanska, C. Broodo, E. G. Pottebaum, J. Mrazkova, Zhigang Xiao, J. Kim, Y. Lin, Chao Jin, Y. C. Yang, D. Li, L. Kumar, A. Chatterjee, N. Xu, S. Salur, R. Ma, H. Xu, M. Svoboda, J. Vaněk, Hongbo Qiu, I. Mooney, N. Shah, J. Wang, Y. He, Arpita Das, S. S. Shi, X. Wu, A. K. Pandey, Y. Song, Tingting Lu, X. Luo, T. Ljubicic, X. H. He, P. C. Weidenkaff, V. Prozorova, F. Seck, S. Mioduszewski, S. Margetis, Z. Qin, S. Trentalange, G. Van Buren, J. Engelage, S. L. Huang, G. Eppley, J. Seger, J. Putschke, A. Gu, H. Caines, J. M. Landgraf, N. Herrmann, D. Cebra, Z. Tang, A. Hamed, X. Zhu, C. P. Wong, D. Tlusty, F. J. M. Geurts, A. Lebedev, H. Zbroszczyk, Y. Cheng, A. I. Sheikh, A. Kiselev, M. A. Lisa, M. A. Rosales Aguilar, T. Truhlar, Z. Ahammed, A. Jalotra, S. R. Sharma, F. Videbæk, L. Ruan, S. Zhou, J. D. Nam, Kai Wang, D. Kalinkin, D. Roy, S. Esumi, T. Tarnowsky, H. Wieman, M. M. Mondal, M. Calderón de la Barca Sánchez, A. Gupta, Y. Wang, X. Sun, S. K. Pal, W. Xie, W. W. Jacobs, A. Ogawa, Y. Xu, W. Christie, B. Surrow, D. G. Underwood, T. D. S. Stanislaus, R. Bellwied, Z. Liu, Z. Tu, L. Ma, A. R. Timmins, F. Wang, C. A. Gagliardi, R. S. Longacre, P. V. Shanmuganathan, Y. Sun, L. B. Havener, Md. Nasim, L. K. Kosarzewski, J. Bielčík, P. Chaloupka, J. Lauret, W. Zha, C. Markert, C. Perkins, D. Mallick, J. D. Brandenburg, Z. Yan, B. S. Page, F. Zhao, Z. Ye, K. Kauder, C. Jena, N. Magdy, G. D. Westfall, D. Kapukchyan, J. H. Lee, R. Fatemi, M. Posik, M. Nie, M. M. Aggarwal, M. Csanád, G. Wang, E. G. Judd, A. Khanal, S. Aslam, O. D. Tsai, K. Mi, S. Bhatta, J. Adam, S. W. Wissink, S. A. Voloshin, S. K. Radhakrishnan, J. W. Harris, X. Li, A. K. Panday, M. Zyzak, I. R. C. A. Pinto, E. C. Aschenauer, Y. Shi, J. M. Nelson, Y. S. Chang, T. Ullrich, Y. Huang, T. Gao, Xixin Liang, M. I. Nagy, M. J. Skoby, T. Galatyuk, C. Liu, Y. Li, X. Chu, Q. Yang, C. H. Cheng, C. Yang, H. Nasrulloh, A. J. Watroba, B. Mondal, A. K. Alshammri
article en
3 citations

Abstract

In a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), the fundamental building blocks of matter, quarks and gluons, are under extreme conditions of temperature and density. A QGP could exist in the early stages of the Universe, and in various objects and events in the cosmos. The thermodynamic and hydrodynamic properties of the QGP are described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and can be studied in heavy-ion collisions. Despite being a key thermodynamic parameter, the QGP temperature is still poorly known. Thermal lepton pairs (e<sup>+</sup>e<sup>-</sup> and μ<sup>+</sup>μ<sup>-</sup>) are ideal penetrating probes of the true temperature of the emitting source, since their invariant-mass spectra suffer neither from strong final-state interactions nor from blue-shift effects due to rapid expansion. Here we measure the QGP temperature using thermal e<sup>+</sup>e<sup>-</sup> production at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The average temperature from the low-mass region (in-medium ρ<sup>0</sup> vector-meson dominant) is (2.01 ± 0.23) × 10<sup>12</sup> K, consistent with the chemical freeze-out temperature from statistical models and the phase transition temperature from Lattice QCD. The average temperature from the intermediate mass region (above the ρ<sup>0</sup> mass, QGP dominant) is significantly higher at (3.25 ± 0.60) × 10<sup>12</sup> K. This work provides essential experimental thermodynamic measurements to map out the QCD phase diagram and understand the properties of matter under extreme conditions.

Nature CommunicationsVol. 16(1)
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (US), University of California, Riverside (US), Eötvös Loránd University (HU), Warsaw University of Technology (PL), Creighton University (US), University of Science and Technology of China (CN), Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (IN), Argonne National Laboratory (US), Indian Institute of Technology Patna (IN), State University of New York (US), University of Kentucky (US), University of Jammu (IN), University of Tsukuba (JP), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US), Valparaiso University (US), Kent State University (US), Shandong University (CN), National Institute of Technology Durgapur (IN), Chongqing University (CN), University of California, Los Angeles (US), National Institute of Science Education and Research (IN), Wayne State University (US), University of Tarapacá (CL), Lehigh University (US), South China Normal University (CN), United States Naval Academy (US), Ball State University (US), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Brookhaven National Laboratory (US), Purdue University West Lafayette (US), Heidelberg University (DE), Krakow University of Economics (PL), Fudan University (CN), Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (DE), Sejong University (KR), Guangxi Normal University (CN), Huzhou Normal University (CN), Technische Universität Darmstadt (DE), Yale University (US), Southern Connecticut State University (US), University of Illinois Chicago (US), Central China Normal University (CN), Max Planck Institute for Physics (DE), Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Berhampur (IN), Indiana University Bloomington (US), Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (CN), Institute of Modern Physics (CN), Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tirupati (IN), Czech Academy of Sciences, Nuclear Physics Institute (CZ), University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Wuhan University of Science and Technology (CN), University of Houston (US), Czech Technical University in Prague (CZ), University of Calabria (IT), Texas Southern University (US), Panjab University (IN), The Ohio State University (US), Abilene Christian University (US), AGH University of Krakow (PL), Rice University (US), Lanzhou University (CN), American University in Cairo (EG), University of California, Davis (US), Temple University (US), Academia Sinica (TW), The University of Texas at Austin (US), Michigan State University (US), Texas A&M University (US), National Cheng Kung University (TW), University of California, Berkeley (US), Tsinghua University (CN)
National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Office of Science, Nuclear Physics, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
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High-Energy Particle Collisions Research
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