Researchers affiliated with the University of Copenhagen and the international ALICE collaboration at CERN have successfully reproduced quark-gluon plasma—the state of matter believed to exist in the Universe during its first millionth of a second after the Big Bang—using collisions between atomic nuclei considerably smaller than scientists previously thought necessary. The experiments involved accelerating oxygen-16 and neon-20 nuclei to nearly the speed of light and colliding them together. This advancement pushed the boundary for how small atomic nuclei can be while still generating this primordial material, demonstrating that production of quark-gluon plasma does not require collisions between very heavy nuclei such as lead, as had been long assumed.
When the atomic nuclei collide at extremely high speeds, their constituent particles briefly transform into a tiny droplet of quark-gluon plasma. Although scientists cannot directly observe the plasma itself, which exists for only a fraction of a second before expanding and converting into other particles, they can measure and analyze the movement patterns of particles that emerge immediately afterward. The research revealed that these patterns contain information about the original shape of the colliding nuclei. Collisions between two oxygen nuclei produce a relatively rounded particle pattern, while collisions involving neon generate a distinctive bowling-pin-shaped pattern.
This novel approach to probing atomic nuclei represents a potential paradigm shift in nuclear physics research. Traditionally, physicists have investigated nuclear structure using relatively low-energy experiments, but this technique reverses that strategy by smashing nuclei together at the highest available energies and reconstructing their shapes from the resulting patterns. Understanding nuclear structure is significant because it reveals how protons and neutrons are arranged within the nucleus and provides information about the strong force, one of nature’s four fundamental forces that scientists continue to study.
The research findings were published in Physical Review Letters. Scientists plan to conduct additional experiments using even lighter atomic nuclei, including helium-4, to determine the minimum size collision system capable of producing quark-gluon plasma. Researchers note that the technique could ultimately provide a new methodology for investigating atomic nuclei whose internal structures remain poorly understood.
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