Investigating the Quark Gluon Plasma with Heavy Ion Collisions

By colliding heavy ion collisions at high energies, mesoscopic regions are created with temperatures near $4\times 10^{12}$ Kelvin. At these temperatures, protons and other hadrons melt and the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) is created. The transient state exists for less than $10^{-22}$ seconds before cooling and disassociating. Experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and at the LHC record the tracks of the thousands of outgoing hadrons and electromagnetic particles in a single event. I will provide a few examples of how chemical and bulk properties of the QGP can be extracted by comparing sophisticated models of the collision to data.