Joey Staa

Joey Staa

Doctoral student

Personal profile

Research

At the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), heavy ions, like Lead or Xenon, are accelerated to near-light speed before colliding. In such a collision, a new state of matter is created called the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). This medium constitutes an environment that is extremely hot and extremely dense. In fact, it is theorised that the QGP filled the Universe microseconds after the Big Bang, before matter as we know it could exist. Because of these extraordinary conditions, as well as its relation to the very early universe, the QGP is one of the most interesting substances to study.

My research focuses on studying the QGP created at the LHC by observing the remnants of the collision using the ALICE detector. In particular, fluctuations in the number of particles produced may indicate the presence of a phase transition between the QGP and a gas of hadrons. By studying such fluctuations, we may be able to pinpoint the exact conditions required to form the QGP, and use that information to better describe the evolution of the Universe from the Big Bang to the present.

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