Colloquium – Yang-Ting Chien

Yang-Ting Chien, Georgia State University

Probing the Trillion Degree Little Bang in Heavy Ion Collisions

In relativistic collisions of large nuclei, a hot and dense medium referred to as the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) can be formed, which explodes and evaporates very soon after collisions. The long-distance behavior of such a medium resembles a liquid, and its inner working is still an open question. In this talk I will explain how we can probe the QGP using streams of energetic particles produced in hard collisions known as jets. These jets penetrate the QGP, and through strong interactions, the substructure of jets can tell us information about short-distance medium properties. The data from Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research will hopefully shed light on the microscopic picture of the QGP. A path toward the future Electron Ion Collider is being planned, which will provide essential information about nuclear structure as initial condition of the QGP formation.

Bio: Professor Yang-Ting Chien is a theoretical particle physicist working on various aspects of the strong interaction at high energy colliders. In particular, his studies focus on the substructures of jets and the high accuracy calculations using effective field theory techniques. He obtained his Ph.D. degree at Harvard University and conducted postdoctoral research at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stony Brook University before he joined Georgia State University as an assistant professor.

October 23, 2025 @ 4:10pm (CST) in 4327 Stevenson Center; light refreshments available at 3:50 PM

Host: L Chen