Experimental explorations at RHIC and LHC have revealed the surprising fact that the long-distance behavior of the QGP closely resembles that of an almost inviscid fluid.
The two central themes of the RHIC heavy ion program are the exploration of the phases of baryon-rich QCD using beam energy scans, and understanding the nature of the QGP at different length scales using heavy quarks and jets, a collimated bunch of highly energetic particles.
Heavy flavor physics are key targets of the heavy-ion programs of the RHIC and LHC experiments.With this project we want to push the studies of heavy quarks in the QGP, where we have developed and applied various methods in the quenched approximation and recently for unphysical light quark degrees of freedom, to a realistic medium including 2+1 flavor of dynamical degrees of freedom.
The generation of large and fine gauge field configurations for 2+1 flavor QCD with HISQ action together with the well-developed methods to determine spectral and transport properties of heavy quarks will allow to provide important physical results that are relevant for phenomenological and experimental studies of heavy quarks in heavy ion experiments and therefore extremely relevant for the heavy ion community.
Stavanger University, Norway;
Bielefeld University, Germany;
Regenburg University, Germany;
Brookhaven National Laboratory, United States.