Researchers at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have obtained direct evidence that quarks produce wakes while moving through quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter that existed in the universe’s first microseconds. The discovery demonstrates that this plasma behaves as a unified fluid rather than a collection of independent particles. When quarks move through the plasma at high speeds, they generate ripples and swirling motions similar to a duck creating waves on water, indicating the plasma is sufficiently dense to slow down quarks and respond to their presence.
A team led by MIT physicists developed a novel detection method to identify these quark wakes by analyzing particle collision data from the Compact Muon Solenoid detector. Previous efforts to observe such wakes had focused on searching for pairs of quarks and antiquarks traveling in opposite directions, but this approach proved problematic because the wake from one particle would obscure the signal from the other. The researchers overcame this limitation by examining collisions that produce a single quark moving opposite to a Z boson, a neutral elementary particle that interacts minimally with the surrounding plasma and serves as a clear reference point.
Quark-gluon plasma is believed to represent the first liquid that existed in the universe and reached temperatures of several trillion degrees during its brief existence. Scientists characterize it as a near-perfect liquid in which quarks and gluons move together with minimal friction. The findings, published in Physics Letters B, support theoretical predictions about how the plasma responds to energetic particles. By measuring characteristics of the quark wakes—including their size, speed, distance, and decay time—scientists may gain insights into the fundamental properties of primordial matter and conditions that prevailed during the universe’s inception.
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