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Quark–gluon plasma (QGP) is a short-lived, extremely hot and dense phase of matter in which quarks and gluons are no longer confined inside hadrons such as protons and neutrons. Physicists create tiny QGP-like systems in high-energy collisions and infer their properties from the particles produced as those systems expand and cool.
What is quark–gluon plasma?
Quark–gluon plasma is a phase of matter described by quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong interaction. In ordinary matter, quarks are bound into hadrons: protons and neutrons are baryons, while mesons contain a quark and an antiquark. At sufficiently high energy density, those familiar bound structures give way to a medium in which quarks and gluons are deconfined. ALICE’s overview of QCD matter and CERN’s heavy-ion explainer describe this state.
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“Plasma” does not mean an ordinary ionized gas. QGP remains strongly interacting, and it is not a stable material that can be collected. Deconfinement also does not mean detectors capture free quarks: as the system cools, quarks and gluons form hadrons again, and those outgoing particles are what experiments measure.
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At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), researchers collide atomic nuclei at very high energies. The energy deposited in an extremely small region can create a dense system of interacting quarks and gluons. It expands and cools rapidly, then produces hadrons that travel into detectors. CERN’s ALICE experiment is dedicated to heavy-ion physics at the LHC.
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The temperatures involved are beyond everyday comparison. CERN and ALICE describe LHC collisions as producing temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the centre of the Sun; this is a rounded educational comparison, not a thermometer reading for one particular event. CMS gives an approximate QGP transition temperature of 2,000 billion degrees. These public-facing figures are estimates and should not be read as measurements of every collision’s exact temperature.
How do physicists know QGP formed if they cannot see it directly?
The brief fireball cannot be inspected while it exists. Researchers infer its properties from correlated patterns among the particles that emerge after it cools, and they compare those patterns with expectations from other nuclear effects. No single image or visual metaphor proves that QGP formed; the case comes from measurements and how well competing explanations account for them.
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Collective flow
Particles do not always emerge evenly in every direction. Anisotropic flow describes preferred directions in the distribution of outgoing particles, consistent with collective expansion of the matter created in a collision. Flow is one important QGP-related observable, but flow-like patterns in small systems do not by themselves settle what mechanism produced them.
Energy loss and jet quenching
Energetic quarks and gluons can produce sprays of particles called jets. When those partons travel through a dense medium, they can lose energy; the resulting changes to particle and jet production are known as energy loss or jet quenching. CERN’s heavy-ion overview explains why this is used as evidence for a dense medium.
For an oxygen–oxygen result, ALICE compared neutral-pion production in oxygen–oxygen collisions with proton–oxygen reference data, which helps distinguish energy loss from conventional nuclear effects. ALICE reported unambiguous evidence of parton energy loss in oxygen–oxygen collisions; the result was presented by Nicolas Strangmann at a CERN-LHC Seminar on 21 July 2026. ALICE’s report on the oxygen result says its measured energy loss is a hallmark signature.
What the oxygen result’s 4.9σ figure means
ALICE Physics Coordinator David Chinellato said: “The evidence of parton energy loss we have established in oxygen collisions is 4.9σ away from the null hypothesis, meaning a 1 in 2 million chance of being an accident.” The figure refers to the reported oxygen parton-energy-loss measurement and its tested null hypothesis. It is not a blanket probability that QGP exists, nor does it make every possible interpretation of the broader phenomenon impossible to question. The comparison with proton–oxygen data is part of the effort to account for conventional nuclear effects.
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Did quark–gluon plasma exist after the Big Bang?
Yes. CERN and the U.S. Department of Energy describe the early universe as having been hot and dense enough to contain QGP, which cooled and formed hadrons as the universe expanded. “The first few microseconds” is a useful broad description of this early period, not a precise timeline established by the collider measurements discussed here. CERN’s overview and the Department of Energy’s quarks and gluons explainer provide accessible background.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchCollider experiments reproduce some extreme conditions in a microscopic laboratory system; they do not recreate the scale or duration of the early cosmos.
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Can small collisions make QGP?
Heavy-ion collisions are the established setting for studying QGP. Whether the smallest collision systems create a QGP, or produce some of the same signatures through other mechanisms, remains an active question. Recent LHC results extend QGP-like signatures to oxygen and neon collisions and to selected high-multiplicity proton collisions, but the evidence must be interpreted in terms of the specific observable and comparison used.
| Collision system | What is measured | Reference or control | What the result supports |
|---|---|---|---|
| Large heavy-ion systems | Collective flow and energy loss or suppression of energetic particles and jets. | Interpretation relies on multiple observables and comparisons against other effects. | The established setting for studying QGP and its properties. |
| Light-ion systems, including oxygen and neon | ALICE reported neutral-pion production and parton energy loss for oxygen–oxygen collisions. | ALICE compared oxygen–oxygen with proton–oxygen production to help account for conventional nuclear effects. | ALICE called the oxygen energy-loss evidence unambiguous for that observable; the broader question of how small a system can be remains under study. |
| Selected high-multiplicity proton–proton collisions | ALICE reported stronger anisotropic flow for baryons than mesons over the measured intermediate-momentum range in a subset of events. | The reported pattern is specific to that high-multiplicity subset; the report notes remaining model/data discrepancies. | The result supports an expanding quark-system hypothesis but does not establish that every proton collision creates QGP. |
In its 20 March 2026 report, ALICE described the baryon–meson flow pattern as a new sign in a subset of unusually high-multiplicity proton collisions. Physics Coordinator David Dobrigkeit Chinellato said, “This is the first time we have observed, for a large interval in momentum and for multiple species, this flow pattern in a subset of proton collisions in which an unusually large number of particles are produced,” and added, “Our results support the hypothesis that an expanding system of quarks is present even when the size of the collision system is small.” The qualification matters: this supports a hypothesis for those selected events, rather than proving that all proton collisions create QGP. CERN and ALICE’s report also notes that models still have discrepancies with the data.
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