Gold Ion Collision, PHENIX Detector

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SS2699350

JC4321

Event display of a single collision of 200 GeV gold ions as measured by the silicon vertex tracker at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider's PHENIX detector. The PHENIX detector at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) records many different particles emerging from RHIC collisions, including photons, electrons, muons, and quark-containing particles called hadrons. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) one of only two operating heavy-ion colliders, and the only spin-polarized proton collider ever built. Located at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and used by an international team of researchers, it is the only operating particle collider in the US. The primary goal of PHENIX is to discover and study a new state of matter called the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Detecting and understanding the QGP allows us to understand better the universe in the moments after the Big Bang.

Brookhaven National Laboratory / Science Source