Towards the Little Bang Standard Model

Abstract

I review recent progress in developing a complete dynamical model for the evolution of the Little Bang fireballs created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, and using the model to extract the transport properties and initial density fluctuations of the liquid quark-gluon plasma state of matter of which makes up these Little Bangs during the first half of their lives.

Comments: 10 pages, 7 figures. Invited talk presented at the international workshop "Discovery Physics at the LHC (Kruger2012)", Dec. 3-7, 2012, Kruger Park, South Africa, to appear in the proceedings in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (open access)