Joint HEP/NP Seminar: The Hadronic Matter and Heavy Ion Collisions at Relativistic Energies

In the last 20 years, heavy-ion collisions have been a unique way to study the hadronic matter in the laboratory. Its phase diagram remains unknown, although many experimental and theoretical studies have been undertaken in the last decades. After the initial experiences accelerating heavy nuclei onto fixed targets at the AGS (BNL, USA) and the SPS (CERN, Switzerland), the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL was the first ever built heavy-ion collider. RHIC delivered its first collisions in June 2000 boosting the heavy-ion community. In November 2010, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN delivered lead-lead collisions at unprecedented center-of-mass energies, 14 times larger than that at RHIC. The three major experiments, ALICE, ATLAS and CMS, have already obtained many intriguing results. Needless to say that the heavy-ion programs at RHIC and LHC promise fascinating and exciting results in the next decade.