Tag: Quenching

Colliding atomic nuclei at very high energies “melts” the boundaries of individual protons and neutrons, setting quarks and gluons to form a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Quarks or gluons in the colliding ions sometimes scatter off one another and then split, forming parallel sprays of particles called jets. Tracking how jets lose energy, called “quenching,” allows scientists to learn about the QGP and the nuclear strong force. New results find that some quarks lose energy even before they split to form a jet.