Session Q01: Plenary: Scientific Impact of Major Facilities

How RHIC changed the way we think in Physics

The discoveries made at RHIC definitely changed our thinking. The complex final states in heavy ion collisions have so many particles that they produce statistical matter in which quarks are deconfined. This plasma not only obeys hydrodynamics but is a strongly coupled QCD liquid. String theory-derived approaches can be used to describe this ultra-low viscosity liquid, which is opaque to quarks and gluons, producing a large drag even on the heavy charm and bottom quarks. Interactions with quark gluon plasma can be studied by measuring the substructure of QCD jets.   

How LHC changed the way we think in Physics

Discoveries and measurements at the LHC impacted on particle physics in a broad variety of ways. On one side, the Higgs discovery confirmed the basic scenario for electroweak symmetry breaking, namely the Standard Model (SM). On the other, the absence of widely anticipated phenomena beyond the SM led to a major rethinking of the motivations for the existence of such new phenomena, as well as of the way searches for new physics are performed, and the ensuing constraints are interpreted. In parallel, precise measurements of a diverse variety of phenomena exposed new puzzles in our understanding of the SM dynamics, challenging established wisdom.   

How LIGO and Virgo changed the way we think in Physics

Despite entirely legitimate concerns in the 1980s and 1990s on the viability of constructing gravitational-wave detectors sensitive enough to detect gravitational waves as well as uncertainties in the physics of gravitational-wave sources and, particularly, their associated event rates, LIGO and Virgo succeeded in opening a new window into the Universe in 2015 with the detection of a binary black hole merger. Since then, detections of gravitational waves have yielded an abundance of knowledge about some of the highest energy events that the cosmos produces and revealed new insights into relativistic astrophysical phenomena.   

 

In this talk, I'll briefly present some of the history of LIGO and Virgo as well as the key advances in precision measurement/interferometry that underpin gravitational-wave detectors. Much of the presentation will emphasize what gravitational-wave detections of mergers of stellar mass black holes and neutron stars have taught us about since the first detection in 2015.   Finally, I'll briefly preview the evolution of ground-based astronomy for the coming decades.