Stuti Raizada L&S Sciences
Exploring cool things about the hottest matter in the universe
Nuclear physics aims to understand the properties of the strong force which describes how quarks and gluons, the constituents of protons and neutrons in the nuclei of atoms, interact with each other. It is one of the four fundamental forces. This force can be understood by studying a state of matter known as the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) which is created by colliding nuclei at very high energies. My project aims to measure correlations between particles formed with the QGP. I will analyze data produced by the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) detector at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) to study partonic energy loss in heavy-ion collisions and how the QGP affects fragmentation of high energy quarks and gluons. I will specifically study collimated sprays of particles called jets to understand how particles lose energy as they traverse the medium produced in heavy-ion collisions.