Topical Collaboration on Heavy-Flavor TheorY (HEFTY) for QCD Matter

A Department of Energy funded collaboration in Nuclear Theory

Mission Statement:

High-energy collisions of heavy atomic nuclei provide the fascinating opportunity to study strongly interacting matter under extreme collision, including the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), that last existed just a few microseconds after the Big Bang. The heavy charm and bottom quarks (“heavy flavors”) are premier probes of the fascinating properties of the QGP and its transition back into hadrons, which involves the fundamental phenomena of quark confinement and mass generation. 

The HEFTY collaboration aims at developing a comprehensive theory framework to study the spectral and transport properties of heavy quarks and quarkonia in strongly interacting matter, and implement these into quantum transport approaches that will be deployed to the analysis of heavy-flavor observables at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), providing unprecedented and quantitative insights into the microscopic properties of the QGP and its hadronization.