Jan Rafelski, Department of Physics, The University of Arizona, Tucson

Probing QGP properties with strangeness

Beginning with the CERN SPS experiments 30 years ago we search for the understanding of how energy becomes matter, that is we study the hadronization of primordial phase of matter, quark-gluon plasma. Today the ALICE is the experiment at the CERN LHC build predominantly to study this process. The key information is derived in study of multistrange hadrons which carry information both, about the process of matter production (hadronization) E => mc^2, as well as about earlier stages when entropy and strangeness are produced. Very recent results show that even a relatively small pp and pA collisions at the LHC energy-scale are creating the new quark-gluon plasma (QGP) phase of matter.