The scientific working group participates in two large experiments on ultrarelativistic heavy-ion physics:

The future experiment CBM (Compressed Baryonic Matter) being built at the international accelerator facility FAIR in Darmstadt and the ALICE experiment (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) at the CERN-LHC in Geneva.

Ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions allow to simulate and investigate dense cosmic matter in the laboratory. During the collision process densities, as they prevail, for example, in neutrons stars are created. The analysis of the experimental data then allows to narrow down the nuclear equation of state of dense nuclear matter.

At the particles energies at the CERN LHS (energy/nucleon = 5.5 TeV) densities and temperatures are reached as the prevailed a few micro secoonds after the big bang. The data reveal the properties of a new state of matter - the quark gluon plasma - and its phase transition to normal hadronic matter. You can find more to the quark-gluon plasma here.