ABSTRACT: The early moments of the universe are thought to have consisted of a quark-gluon plasma that physicists have been attempting to replicate for decades. Through the use of heavy ion colliders, like RHIC in Brookhaven, great strides have been made to recreate the conditions necessary to form quark-gluon plasma, QGP. We discuss the how the quark gluon plasma is formed and different signatures that physicists use to detect the phase transition to quark-gluon plasma. To assist in understanding how to recognize QGP upon formation, computer programs allow us to simulate and analyze a heavy ion collision that produces QGP. From the simulated data, we calculate the viscosity, pressure, entropy-density, and thus, the viscosity-entropy density ratio. Using the data generated from the simulation, we make approximations that give the general trends of certain properties and then compare actual values from the simulations to the approximations. These values can alsobe compared to actual values of theseproperties observed in the laboratory.
Here is the thesis in PDF: Thesis.pdf (about 0.5 MBytes)