Credit: CERN All four main LHC experiments have found new signs that oxygen and neon collisions may create the extreme state of matter that existed during the first microseconds after the Big Bang.
One year after the first-ever collisions of oxygen at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the main LHC collaborations—ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb—have each reported signs of the state of matter known as quark–gluon plasma (QGP) produced in these collisions.
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Under these extreme conditions, composite particles break down into quarks and the gluons that ordinarily hold them together.
Now, having searched even more deeply, the LHC experiments have seen multiple signs of QGP formation in oxygen–oxygen and neon–neon collisions.
Credit: CERN One clue to QGP formation is that fast-moving quarks and gluons lose energy as they pass through this hot, dense medium in a phenomenon known as parton energy loss.
CMS observed a suppression of charged-particle production in oxygen–oxygen and neon–neon collisions compared with proton–proton collisions, suggesting parton energy loss and the presence of QGP in the light-ion collisions.
Context that stayed inside the record
In another study, LHCb compared how particles consisting of a charm quark and a light quark were suppressed in oxygen–oxygen and neon–neon collisions, finding evidence that the suppression becomes more prominent in the heavier neon collisions.
CMS found evidence of this varying suppression for upsilon mesons—bound states of a bottom quark and its antiquark—by comparing oxygen–oxygen and neon–neon collisions.
The LHC experiments have long been using several types of particles to study the properties of this extreme state of matter, in which quarks and gluons are not confined within composite particles but instead roam like particles in a liquid with small frictional resistance.
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