Reinhard Stock

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Reinhard Stock (born 1938) is a German experimental physicist, specializing in heavy-ion physics.

Contents

Education and career

Stock studied at Heidelberg University, where he received his doctorate with thesis advisor Rudolf Bock. [1] Stock was a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked on biophysics. From 1985 until his retirement in 2004, he was a professor at the Institute for Nuclear Physics at the Goethe University Frankfurt, where he was head of the institute for a time. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) since 2007.

During the 1970s Stock did pioneering work with Hans Gutbrod and Rudolf Bock in setting up relativistic heavy ion experiments at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL [2] ), where he worked on Bevalac with Arthur Poskanzer. Stock continued such research from the mid-1980s with higher energies at CERN. He was a longtime spokesman for the NA49 experiment there. In a series of experiments started in 1994, the CERN scientists used the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) to create a quark–gluon plasma in relativistic collisions between lead nuclei and to indirectly detect the decay of the quark–gluon plasma into neutrons and protons. In a conference held in Turin in May 1999, the hundreds of CERN scientists from 22 countries reached a consensus that their combined results confirm the hypothesis that quarks become deconfined at high energy densities. [3]

From 1999 to 2004 he chaired the Scientific Council of the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research.

He received in 1988, jointly with Hans Gutbrod, the German Physical Society's Robert Wichard Pohl Prize. [4] In 1989 the German Research Foundation awarded him the Leibniz Prize. [5] In 2008 he and Walter Greiner received the European Physical Society's Lise Meitner Prize for research on relativistic heavy ion physics. Stock was cited "for his outstanding contributions to the development of the field of relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions by initiating research through the innovative use of high-energy accelerators (BEVALAC at LBL, SPS at CERN) which indicated the existence of a new form of matter". [6]

Selected publications

Articles

Books

Related Research Articles

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A gluon is an elementary particle that acts as the exchange particle for the strong force between quarks. It is analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force between two charged particles. Gluons bind quarks together, forming hadrons such as protons and neutrons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider</span> Particle accelerator

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider is the first and one of only two operating heavy-ion colliders, and the only spin-polarized proton collider ever built. Located at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York, and used by an international team of researchers, it is the only operating particle collider in the US. By using RHIC to collide ions traveling at relativistic speeds, physicists study the primordial form of matter that existed in the universe shortly after the Big Bang. By colliding spin-polarized protons, the spin structure of the proton is explored.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">High-energy nuclear physics</span> Intersection of nuclear physics and high-energy physics

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Hadronization is the process of the formation of hadrons out of quarks and gluons. There are two main branches of hadronization: quark-gluon plasma (QGP) transformation and colour string decay into hadrons. The transformation of quark-gluon plasma into hadrons is studied in lattice QCD numerical simulations, which are explored in relativistic heavy-ion experiments. Quark-gluon plasma hadronization occurred shortly after the Big Bang when the quark–gluon plasma cooled down to the Hagedorn temperature when free quarks and gluons cannot exist. In string breaking new hadrons are forming out of quarks, antiquarks and sometimes gluons, spontaneously created from the vacuum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">STAR detector</span>

The STAR detector is one of the four experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in Brookhaven National Laboratory, United States.

Quark matter or QCD matter refers to any of a number of hypothetical phases of matter whose degrees of freedom include quarks and gluons, of which the prominent example is quark-gluon plasma. Several series of conferences in 2019, 2020, and 2021 were devoted to this topic.

In high-energy physics, jet quenching is a phenomenon that can occur in the collision of ultra-high-energy particles. In general, the collision of high-energy particles can produce jets of elementary particles that emerge from these collisions. Collisions of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion particle beams create a hot and dense medium comparable to the conditions in the early universe, and then these jets interact strongly with the medium, leading to a marked reduction of their energy. This energy reduction is called "jet quenching".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rolf Hagedorn</span> German theoretical physicist

Rolf Hagedorn was a German theoretical physicist who worked at CERN. He is known for the idea that hadronic matter has a "melting point". The Hagedorn temperature is named in his honor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quark–gluon plasma</span> Phase of quantum chromodynamics (QCD)

Quark–gluon plasma is an interacting localized assembly of quarks and gluons at thermal and chemical (abundance) equilibrium. The word plasma signals that free color charges are allowed. In a 1987 summary, Léon van Hove pointed out the equivalence of the three terms: quark gluon plasma, quark matter and a new state of matter. Since the temperature is above the Hagedorn temperature—and thus above the scale of light u,d-quark mass—the pressure exhibits the relativistic Stefan-Boltzmann format governed by temperature to the fourth power and many practically massless quark and gluon constituents. It can be said that QGP emerges to be the new phase of strongly interacting matter which manifests its physical properties in terms of nearly free dynamics of practically massless gluons and quarks. Both quarks and gluons must be present in conditions near chemical (yield) equilibrium with their colour charge open for a new state of matter to be referred to as QGP.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marek Gazdzicki</span> Polish physicist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johann Rafelski</span> German-American theoretical physicist

Johann Rafelski is a German-American theoretical physicist. He is a professor of Physics at The University of Arizona in Tucson, guest scientist at CERN (Geneva), and has been LMU-Excellent Guest Professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Munich, Germany.

In high-energy nuclear physics, strangeness production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is a signature and diagnostic tool of quark–gluon plasma (QGP) formation and properties. Unlike up and down quarks, from which everyday matter is made, heavier quark flavors such as strange and charm typically approach chemical equilibrium in a dynamic evolution process. QGP is an interacting localized assembly of quarks and gluons at thermal (kinetic) and not necessarily chemical (abundance) equilibrium. The word plasma signals that color charged particles are able to move in the volume occupied by the plasma. The abundance of strange quarks is formed in pair-production processes in collisions between constituents of the plasma, creating the chemical abundance equilibrium. The dominant mechanism of production involves gluons only present when matter has become a quark–gluon plasma. When quark–gluon plasma disassembles into hadrons in a breakup process, the high availability of strange antiquarks helps to produce antimatter containing multiple strange quarks, which is otherwise rarely made. Similar considerations are at present made for the heavier charm flavor, which is made at the beginning of the collision process in the first interactions and is only abundant in the high-energy environments of CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

The NA35 experiment was a particle physics experiment that took place in the North Area of the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at CERN. It used a streamer chamber with comprehensive hadronic and electromagnetic calorimetry. This experiment was used to observe the properties of nucleus-nucleus collisions at 60 and 200 GeV/nucleon, to understand the degree of stopping and thermalization, determine the energy densities achievable in those conditions, and to measure other related properties and quantities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Harris (physicist)</span> American experimental physicist

John William Harris is an American experimental high energy nuclear physicist and D. Allan Bromley Professor of Physics at Yale University. His research interests are focused on understanding high energy density QCD and the quark–gluon plasma created in relativistic collisions of heavy ions. Dr. Harris collaborated on the original proposal to initiate a high energy heavy ion program at Cern in Geneva, Switzerland, has been actively involved in the CERN heavy ion program and was the founding spokesperson for the STAR collaboration at RHIC at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the U.S.

Sergei Voloshin is a Russian-American experimental high-energy nuclear physicist and Professor of Physics at Wayne State University. He is best known for his work on event-by-event physics in heavy ion collisions.

Arthur M. Poskanzer was an experimental physicist, known for his pioneering work on relativistic nuclear collisions.

Olga Evdokimov is a Russian born professor of physics at the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC). She is a High Energy Nuclear Physicist, who currently collaborates on two international experiments; the Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC (STAR) experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the LHC, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emanuele Quercigh</span> Italian particle physicist (born 1934)

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Claude Pruneau is a Canadian-American experimental high-energy nuclear physicist. He is a Professor of Physics at Wayne State University and the author of several books. He is best known for his work on particle correlation measurements in heavy ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider.

Julia Apostolova Velkovska is a Bulgarian-American high energy particle physicist who is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Physics at Vanderbilt University. Her research considers nuclear matter in the extreme conditions generated at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. She hopes that this work will help to explain the mechanisms that underpin the strong force.

References

  1. "Reinhard Stock". Physics Tree.
  2. For Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the term "National" was added to its name in 1995. After the death of Ernest O. Lawrence in August 1958, the laboratory was named in 1959 the Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, or LBL for short. "Berkeley Lab History". Berkeley Lab.
  3. Abbott, Alison (20 February 2000). "CERN claims first experimental creation of quark–gluon plasma". Nature. 403 (6770): 581. Bibcode:2000Natur.403..581A. doi: 10.1038/35001196 . PMID   10688162. S2CID   5488198.
  4. "Robert-Wichard-Pohl-Preis, Preisträgerinnen und Preisträger". Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (DPG).
  5. "Leibniz-Preisträrer an der Goethe-Universität (Leibniz Prize Winners at the Goethe University)". uni-frankfurt.de.
  6. "EPS Nuclear Physics Division – Lise Meitner Prize: Prize winners". European Physical Society.