Study proposes mathematical tool to help understand fractal structure of quark-gluon plasma

Quark-gluon plasma (QGP) is a state of matter existing at extremely temperatures and densities, such as those that occur in collisions of hadrons (protons, neutrons and mesons). Under so-called “normal” conditions, quarks and gluons are always confined in the structures that constitute hadrons, but when hadrons are accelerated to relativistic velocities and made to collide with each other, as they are in the experiments performed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the confinement is interrupted and the quarks and gluons scatter, forming a plasma. The phenomenon lasts only a tiny fraction of a second, but observation of it has produced important discoveries about the nature of material reality.