PHENIX – Pioneering High Energy Nuclear Interaction eXperiment

The principle goal of the PHENIX experiment is to measure a maximal set of QGP signatures based upon present theoretical knowledge. Hence, it should be no surprise that the experiment is extraordinarily complex, featuring 11 different detector subsystems (technologies) and hundreds of thousands of electronic channels. PHENIX is the largest and most complex detector at RHIC. Although the most salient feature of the plasma is quark deconfinement, measurements of quark-containing particles seem be the least favorable signatures of the plasma. The reason for this is simple. Despite being deconfined interior to the plasma volume, quarks must hadronize while leaving the collision zone. This process and subsequent reinteractions of the resulting hadronic species threaten to erase plasma signatures from all hadronic spectra. Only non-strongly interacting species (leptons and photons) are emitted directly from the Plasma State without suffering debilitating final state interactions. Among all RHIC experiments, only PHENIX measures these so-called "penetrating probes", muons, electrons, and photons.

Physics from PHENIX

Central Gold-Gold collision at PHENIX