Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics

Dear Colleagues,

A recently discovered state of nuclear matter known as the quark–gluon plasma (QGP) exists at extremely high temperatures and densities formed in relativistic heavy-ion collisions (HIC). Under such extreme conditions, the composite hadronic states dissolve into a soup of their constituents, quarks, and gluons of quantum chromo dynamics (QCD), whose dynamical properties remain a subject of intense theoretical and experimental studies. While the behavior of “colored” elementary states of QCD at short distances is well-understood through countless collider tests and a wealth of theoretical work over past decades, a first-principle picture of their long-distance evolution encoded into the microscopic mechanism of color confinement is still in its infancy, being far from a predictive formulation despite various long-standing attempts. An ongoing resurgence of measurements at world-leading experimental QCD facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL provides a wealth of new precision data sensitive to long-range, high-temperature, and high-density QCD phenomena. These data, in turn, prompt new ideas and approaches toward understanding the details of the QCD phase diagram, effects of the hot/dense medium, dynamical characteristics of the QCD ground state and QGP, and ultimately the hadronization and color confinement mechanisms. This Special Issue aims at providing a comprehensive outlook regarding these important research topics covering the current state-of-the-art vision and ideas that hopefully could shed more light on the fundamental unsolved problems of QCD in extreme conditions.

Prof. Dr. Michal Šumbera
Dr. Jana Bielcikova
Dr. Roman Pasechnik
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Universe is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• heavy-ion collisions
• quark–gluon plasma
• QCD vacuum
• color confinement
• QCD phase transition
• nuclear suppression
• initial-state interactions
• in-medium energy loss
• color screening
• gluon saturation
• QCD equation of state
• collectivityflow