PHENIX: Beyond 15 years of discovery

Abstract

The PHENIX experiment at BNL's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) was designed to uncover properties of the quark–gluon plasma (QGP) via rare penetrating probes. Over the past 15 years, the collaboration has delivered on its promised measurements, often with exciting results beyond those originally foreseen. That the QGP behaves as a nearly perfect fluid and that non-photonic electrons are substantially suppressed has led to the use of heavy quarks as probes of the medium. The PHENIX silicon vertex detectors are opening a new arena for QGP studies, and the MPC-EX, a novel forward calorimeter with silicon readout, accesses low-|$x$| physics via direct photons with unprecedented precision. PHENIX has proposed sPHENIX, a major upgrade using the recently acquired BaBar solenoid and full calorimetric coverage and high rate capabilities. sPHENIX will reconstruct jets and extend observables to higher transverse momentum, where comparisons to results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) heavy-ion program will provide the most insightful. Following the RHIC program, the nuclear physics community has identified an electron ion collider (EIC) as crucial to the next generation of QCD investigations. The BaBar magnet and sPHENIX calorimetry will be an excellent foundation for a new collaborative pursuit of discovery.