The standard model of particle physics predicts severalphase transitions at the Grand Unified scale (10^16 Gev), at the Electroweak scale (10^2 Gev) and at the hadronic or QCD scale (100 Mev). Of these we can only hope to study the latter one with earth bound accelerators!
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions, predicts that at temperatures in excess of 100 Mev ( 10^12 Kelvin!), there is a phase transition to a soup of deconfined quarks and gluons. Another phase transition is predicted to occur at about the same energy range the Chiral Phase transition that results in the low energy world of Pions. Because these temperatures entail extremely large energy densities, comparable to those found in Neutron stars, only Ultrarelativistic Heavy Ion Colliders can explore this regime. RHIC at Brookhaven to begin operation in 1999 and LHC at CERN to begin around 2004 will be able to probe this regime of large densities and tempertures.
Understanding these two phase transitions is of paramount importance in Early Universe Cosmology, because these happened when the Universe was about 10^-6 seconds old!
Our program seeks to develop new tools to study Quantum Field Theory out of equilibrium in this regime of energy and density and to reliably calculate physical observables associated with these phase transitions.
The knowledge acquired from this combination of theory and experiment
will not only provide a deeper understanding of the strong interactions,
but will also prove very valuable to understand better the physics of Astrophysical
objects such as pulsars and neutron stars, and to provide a firmer basis
for the possibility of existence of unusual objects such as strange stars.