Pinning down the structure of quark-gluon plasma, the universe's first fluid
In the first fraction of a second following the Big Bang, matter existed as a trillion-degree plasma of quarks and gluons—subatomic particles that zinged around at close to the speed of light. This roiling soup lasted for just a few microseconds before the particles coalesced into more stable protons and neutrons.
Scientists have developed a new theory to explain how relativistic particles, such as heavy quarks, are affected by quark-gluon plasma, the primordial fluid that existed in the first moments of the universe. The theory, co-developed by physicists at MIT and the University of California at Santa Barbara, predicts how these particles would be pushed and pulled by the fluid as they move through it.
This could help researchers understand the microscopic structure of quark-gluon plasma and provide a new way to characterize it. The researchers found that the relationship between a particle's motion and the fluid's properties, as described by Einstein's theory of Brownian motion, breaks down when particles are moving at relativistic speeds.
They calculated the forces experienced by a heavy quark flying through a weakly interacting gas of quarks and gluons, revealing a tilted probability distribution for the quark's changes in momentum, unlike the bell-shaped curve observed in other fluids.
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