A data-driven approach to quantifying the shear viscosity of nature’s most ideal fluid

Steffen Bass (Duke University)

About a microsecond after the Big Bang, the universe was in a state called the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), in which quarks and gluons, the basic constituents of the strong nuclear force, roamed freely. Due to its large expansion, this plasma went through a phase transition to form hadrons - most importantly nucleons - which constitute the building blocks of matter as we know it today. Determining the properties of the QGP would not only teach us about the dynamics of the early universe but also teach us about the properties of its underlying quantum field theory (Quantum Chromo-Dynamics) at high temperatures and densities - domains of the theory that are currently not accessible in first-principles calculations.

Only in the last two decades have accelerators been able to create the conditions of temperature and density in the laboratory that are favorable for the QGP to exist. The Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory was built specifically to observe and study this phase of matter, and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has devoted a significant research program to this purpose as well.

One of the most surprising discoveries to come out of QGP research is that it behaves like a liquid with the smallest specific viscosity ever observed in nature. This lecture will elucidate how an interdisciplinary collaboration of experimental and theoretical physicists together with computer scientists and statisticians has been able to tease out the remarkable properties of this extreme liquid and how scientific advances in Bayesian statistics and grid computing have come to bear to advance one of the most dynamic areas of Nuclear Physics.

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The colloquium will be streamed but not recorded.
Zoom link: https://uni-frankfurt.zoom.us/j/2848286010?pwd=VmtCY1RCc1hpVStKd0RibFBpc1IzZz09
Meeting ID: 284 828 6010
Password: 068695