The DOE EPSCoR grant supported collaborative research between the University of Kansas and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The focus of the research was on the BRAHMS experiment at the Relativist Heavy Ion Collidor or RHIC. The purpose of RHIC is to understand the nature of the strong nuclear force at very high temperature and very high density when a plasma of quarks and gluons is formed. BRAHMS focused on how the matter created in high-energy collisions of between two gold ions depends on the longitudinal motion of the matter. This can be studied by comparing the mix of particles that emerge at forward angles with those that are emitted at 90degrees with respect to the direction of the original gold ions. By looking at deuteron gold collisions we were also able to study the initial state of a gold nucleus at very high energy and found evidence that the gluons are frozen into a glass like state known as the color glass condensate. Finally BRAHMS studies the length scales that characterize the plasma by looking at smaller systems such as copper on copper and proton on proton collisions.
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