Theoretical High Energy Nuclear, Particle and Astro-Physics 

Prof Azwinndini Muronga’s main field of research is in theoretical high-energy nuclear, particle and astro- physics. Astrophysical objects and processes, both connected with very early and very late phenomena in the cosmological evolution of strongly interacting matter, present an enormous challenge to modern nuclear and particle physics: can scientists recreate – in experiments carried out in the terrestrial laboratory – the conditions prevailing during the first microseconds of the cosmological expansion, or during the late stages of a violent supernova stellar implosion? These investigations culminate for the time being in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, and in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), USA. Under extremely high temperatures and densities, protons and neutrons overlap to such a degree that a quark–gluon plasma is formed. The universe, 1 microsecond after the Big Bang, is believed to have been a plasma of weakly interacting quarks, gluons and leptons. This plasma might even still exist in the deep interiors of neutron stars. Observing the plasma is one of the world’s most prominent scientific goals. Detection of the quark–gluon plasma would not only serve as direct evidence of quarks and gluons, but would also open a new era in physics. Measurements and studies of its properties would hopefully allow scientists to answer some of the fundamental questions about the origin of the universe.