Concept and History
The Concept
The PHENIX Collaboration conducts research with high energy collisions of heavy ions and protons. The primary mission of PHENIX is the following:
- Search for a new state of matter called the Quark-Gluon Plasma, which is believed to be the state of matter existing in the universe shortly after the Big Bang. The data obtained by PHENIX suggest that a new form of matter has indeed been discovered, and that it behaves like a perfect fluid.
- Study matter under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure, and create a map of the Quantum Chromodynamics phase diagram.
- Learn where the proton gets its spin.
- Study the most basic building blocks of nature and the forces that govern them.
PHENIX finished taking data in 2016. A number of analyses are continuing, with emphasis on those with a physic reach unique to PHENIX.
History
1991-2000
- August 1991: PHENIX is born from the merger of proposals named TALES, SPARC, OASIS, and DIMUON.
- PHENIX is designed, built, and installed at RHIC.
- June 15, 2000 at 6:28 am EDT: PHENIX records its first relativistic heavy ion collision.
- Summer of 2000: RHIC Run-1. PHENIX takes data from reduced RHIC energy Gold-Gold collisions.
2001-2010
- February 27, 2001: the first PHENIX physics paper is accepted for publication by the Physical Review Letters scientific journal.
- May 2001 - January 2002: RHIC Run-2. PHENIX takes data from full RHIC energy Gold-Gold and polarized proton-proton collisions.
- March 2003 through May 2003: RHIC Run-3. PHENIX takes data from full RHIC energy deuteron-Gold and polarized proton-proton collisions.
- June 18, 2003: all four RHIC experiments, including PHENIX, release the first results from deuteron-Gold collisions, which confirm that a new state of matter with unique properties has been seen in Gold-Gold collisions at RHIC.
- December 2003 - May 2004: RHIC Run-4. PHENIX takes more data from full RHIC energy Au-Au and polarized proton-proton collisions.
- December 2004 - May 2005: RHIC Run-5. PHENIX takes more data from full RHIC energy Cu-Cu and polarized proton-proton collisions.
- April 2005: the RHIC experiments announce the discovery of perfect liquid matter in RHIC collisions.
- December 2004 - May 2005: PHENIX publishes 3 papers in a single edition of the Physical Review Letters scientific journal.
- March 2006 - June 2006: RHIC Run-6. PHENIX takes more data from full RHIC energy polarized proton-proton collisions.
- May 2007 - July 2007: RHIC Run-7. PHENIX takes much more data from full RHIC energy Au-Au collisions.
- November 2007 through March 2008: RHIC Run-8. PHENIX takes much more data from full RHIC energy deuteron-gold and polarized proton-proton collisions.
- June 2008: the PHENIX White paper publication achieves reknowned status, receiving more than 500 scientific citations in scientific journals.
- February 2009 - April 2009: RHIC Run-9. PHENIX records data from polarized proton-proton collisions with collision energies of 200 GeV and 500 GeV.
- February 2010: PHENIX makes the news following an announcement that the temperature in a RHIC collision is hot enough to produce a Quark-Gluon Plasma.
- January 2010 - June 2010: RHIC Run-10. The new Hadron Blind Detector is installed. The RHIC beam energy scan program begins with gold-gold collisions at 200 GeV, 62.4 GeV, 39 GeV, and 7.7 GeV taken by PHENIX. STAR also takes data from 11 GeV gold-gold collisions.
2011-2016
- February 2011 - June 2011: RHIC Run-11. The new Silicon Vertex Tracker is installed. PHENIX records data from 500 GeV proton-proton collisions and 200 GeV gold-gold collisions. The RHIC beam energy scan program continues with gold-gold collisions at 19.6 GeV and 27 GeV.
- December 5, 2011: PHENIX celebrates its 20th anniversary with a symposium at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
- 2016: PHENIX finishes data taking.
2017-present
- Ongoing analysis of the collected data
