Heavy-ion physics: freedom to do hot, dense, exciting QCD

Abstract

In these two lectures I review the basics of heavy-ion collisions at relativistic energies and the physics we can do with them. I aim to cover the basics on the kinematics and observables in heavy-ion collider experiments, the basics on the phenomenology of the nuclear matter phase diagram, some of the model building and simulations currently used in the heavy-ion physics community and a selected list of amazing phenomenological discoveries and predictions.

Comments: These lectures were given at the 2019 CERN Latin-American School of High-Energy Physics in Cordoba, Argentina, 13 - 26 March 2019 and the notes have been submitted to proceedings of CLASHEP 2019. These lecture notes are based on previous Heavy-Ion and extreme QCD lectures given at CLASHEP by A. Ayala (2017), E. Fraga (2015) and J. Takahashi (2013)