Color-glass condensate: new state of matter discovered at LHC
The most recent experiment at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) has resulted in an unexpected result: collisions generated a “product” that scientists say could be a new state of matter.
Physicists say new state of matter called “Color-glass condensate” (CGC) resulted after protons-lead ions collisions inside LHC tunnel. Photo:CERN
The new type of matter is called color-glass condensate (CGC) and is a “wave” of gluons, the elementary particles associated with powerful forces that hold quarks together (particles inside protons and neutrons). Density of this “swarm” of gluons is very high (hence the term “condensed”) and some of its properties are reminiscent of the behavior of glass and other similar materials, characterized by disordered internal structure (hence the term glass). Regarding the “color”, it refers to the type of load carried by quarks and gluons and describing their interactions inside neutrons and protons. “Color” in this context has nothing to do with the visual perception of a color, but is a term imagined by physicists to characterize variations of quarks and gluons properties which occurs only in within the atomic nucleus.
Researchers who performed experiments on some type of particle collisions did not expect to get this type of matter in the outcome. However this might explain some strange behavior observed in some particles colliding inside the LHC tunnel at CERN.
In the recent studies, scientists accelerated protons (one of the types of particles that make up atoms, ie atomic nucleus) and lead ions (atoms of lead stripped of electrons, leaving each with 82 protons) and crashed them into one another. Resulting explosions melted and disintegrated these particles, giving rise to new types of particles. As expected, most of them were scattered in all directions at speeds approaching that of light.
But scientists found that, in addition to the usual and expected effect, something else happened: new pairs of particles were formed thrown from the crash site in coordinated/directional ways, not random.
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A similar pattern can be observed when two heavy particles, like two lead ions, collide with each other. In this case, there is what scientists call the quark-gluon plasma, a “swarm” of particles at extremely high temperatures similar to those arising in the Universe immediately after the Big Bang. This “swarm” may throw particles in the same direction, thus explaining their movement along coordinated trajectories.
But the quark-gluon plasma effect is not possible when collisions between lead ions and protons, such as in this study.
Therefore, researchers believe this is a totally different state of matter that was called color-glass condensate. Dense gluons “clusters” inside color-glass condensate can also be “sweep” particles in the same direction, suggested physicist Raju Venugopalan the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Raju Venugopalan is the first scientist who predicted theoretically the existence of this state of matter, which can occur also after proton-proton collisions.
The mechanism may be related to a strange particles property called quantum entanglement (or quantum coupling): two entangled particles remain connected (yet in an incomprehensible way) even after they are physically separated, so that one’s action influences the partner even from long distance.
Existence of entangled gluons of the color-glass condensate, said Raju Venugopalan, would explain how particles ejected from the collision point can communicate with each other by sending information about the displacement direction.
The strange phenomenon is, therefore, an unexpected outcome of the proton-lead ion collisions that had been made at the LHC with different purpose: to serve as a benchmark for comparisons with other types of collisions. The discovery is described in the next issue of the publication Physical Review B. Source: LiveScience