prof. Georg Wolschin, Univ. of Heidelberg

Spectroscopy in the quark-gluon plasma

Since the discovery of spectroscopy with solar light, the method has contributed to breakthroughs in physics. In the field of relativistic heavy-ion collisions, one may use it in an attempt to investigate the properties of the quark-gluon plasma that is being formed for very short times, and resembles the state of matter in the early universe. In particular, the spectroscopy of heavy mesons like charmonium and bottomonium is extremely sensitive to the properties of the surrounding quark-gluon medium, and is currently being used in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. I present an overview of the physics goals, and a specific theoretical approach towards an interpretation of the results including recent predictions.