QCD in the RHIC Era

Coordinators: Dmitri Kharzeev, Emil Mottola, Krishna Rajagopal
This conference will kick off a three month program during which participants will seek a multifaceted understanding of implications of RHIC for QCD and of QCD for RHIC. The longer program will bring together theorists with expertise in a wide variety of areas, including perturbative QCD, small-x physics, lattice gauge theory, nonequilibrium quantum field theory, and many approaches to varied aspects of the physics of hot and/or dense quark matter and to the phenomenology of heavy ion collisions. The purpose of this week-long conference is to kick the longer program off with a "reality check", in the form of talks by experimentalists about the latest data and its implications for QCD. Thus, about half the talks will be by experimentalists, with the other half by theorists representing the many areas mentioned above. We hope to hear exciting new developments from the current run at RHIC and new theoretical developments also, some directly related to RHIC and others more broadly related to QCD in the RHIC era. The invited speakers have been charged with setting the tone for the three months of theoretical effort to come. We have asked them to keep questions like these in mind, as they prepare their talks:
  • "What are the theoretical questions which are ripe for qualitative progress in the next few months?"
  • "What have we learned from RHIC so far?"
  • "How much of the data can be explained with simple phenomenological models and how much requires QCD?"
  • For experimentalists: "What is the most outstanding result from RHIC that you challenge theorists to explain from QCD?"
  • For theorists: "What is the single best quantitative test of QCD predictions for the QGP that you challenge experimentalists to measure?"

We hope that lively discussion will be a memorable aspect of the conference. All talks will be followed by extended time for discussion and we hope that the discussions that erupt continue throughout the week. The conference will end, on April 12, with a two hour round table discussion in which the panelists will begin by giving provocative answers to questions like those above.

In addition to contributing to the discussions, all participants are encouraged to contribute posters, which will be on display throughout the week.

Information and a registration form can be found at this page.
The registration deadline is March 8, 2002.

A draft scientific program will be available here shortly.

List of Confirmed Speakers and Round Table Panelists:

Yasuyuki Akiba
Mark Alford
Rolf Baier
Juergen Berges
Jean-Paul Blaizot
Dan Boyanovsky
Peter Braun-Munzinger
Wit Busza
Brian Cole
Axel Drees
John Harris
Ulrich Heinz
Huan Huang
Barbara Jacak
Keijo Kajantie
Frithjof Karsch
Spencer Klein
Alex Kovner
Peter Jacobs
Cristina Manuel
Larry McLerran
David Morrison
Berndt Muller
Rob Pisarski
Gunther Roland
Marzia Rosati
Jack Sandweiss
Helmut Satz
Thomas Schaefer
Edward Shuryak
Paul Stankus
Peter Steinberg
Misha Stephanov
Itzhak Tserruya
Thomas Ullrich
Raju Venugopalan
Flemming Videbaek
Xin-Nian Wang
Uwe-Jens Wiese
Frank Wilczek
Bolek Wyslouch
Larry Yaffe
Bill Zajc*

*to be confirmed