Quark–gluon plasma
State of matter important in cosmology and particle physics
Quark–gluon plasma
Quark–gluon plasma (QGP or quark soup) is an interacting localized assembly of quarks and gluons in chemical equilibrium and local thermal equilibrium. The word plasma signals that free color charges are allowed. In normal matter quarks are confined; in the QGP quarks are deconfined. Quark–gluon plasma (QGP) occurs at energy densities high enough to melt the protons and neutrons that make up the nuclei of normal matter. It is a very low viscosity liquid composed of the elementary particles, quarks and gluons, a state of matter new to physics when it was discovered. Quark–gluon plasma is studied to understand the characteristics of the universe at about 20 μs after the Big Bang, when the universe was extremely hot and dense. Experimental groups use ultrarelativistic beams of ions colliding with other ions or protons to create this plasma in particle accelerators.
Read on Wikipedia · Image Rajeev S. Bhalerao(Tata Inst.), CC BY 4.0
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