Session AA1: Plenary Session: The Future of Nuclear Physics I

Reaching for the Horizon: The 2015 NSAC Long Range Plan

In April 2014, the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee was charged to conduct a new study of the opportunities and priorities for United States nuclear physics research and to recommend a long range plan for the coordinated advancement of the Nation's nuclear science program over the next decade. The entire community actively contributed to developing this plan. Ideas and goals, new and old, were examined and community priorities were established. The Long Range Plan Working Group gathered at Kitty Hawk, NC to converge on the recommendations. In this talk I will discuss the vision for the future that has emerged from this process. The new plan, ``Reaching for the Horizon,'' offers the promise of great leaps forward in our understanding of nuclear science and new opportunities for nuclear science to serve society.   

Cool QCD: Hadronic Physics and QCD in Nuclei

QCD is the only strongly-coupled theory given to us by Nature, and it gives rise to a host of striking phenomena. Two examples in hadronic physics include the dynamic generation of mass and the confinement of quarks. Indeed, the vast majority of the mass of visible matter is due to the kinetic and potential energy of the massless gluons and the essentially massless quarks. QCD also gives rise to the force that binds protons and neutrons into nuclei, including subtle effects that have historically been difficult to understand. Describing these phenomena in terms of QCD has represented a daunting task, but remarkable progress has been achieved in both theory and experiment. Both CEBAF at Jefferson Lab and RHIC at Brookhaven National Lab have provided unprecedented experimental tools for investigating QCD, and upgrades at both facilities promise even greater opportunities in the future. Also important are programs at FermiLab as well as the LHC at CERN. Looking further ahead, an electron ion collider (EIC) has the potential to answer whole new sets of questions regarding the role of gluons in nuclear matter, an issue that lies at the heart of the generation of mass. On the theoretical side, rapid progress in supercomputers is enabling stunning progress in Lattice QCD calculations, and approximate forms of QCD are also providing deep new physical insight. In this talk I will describe both recent advances in Cool QCD as well as the exciting scientific opportunities that exist for the future.   

Hot QCD Physics and the Perfect Fluid Future

Hot QCD physics encompasses the creation of new states of matter in the laboratory through the collision of relativistic heavy ions. In this talk we review the great progress in the field from data at RHIC and the LHC and advances in theory in the last decade. We then detail plans and requirements to answer the key questions regarding the phases and properties of the Quark Gluon Plasma and how exciting emergent phenomena relate to fundamental features of QCD. We discuss what is needed to complete the scientific mission at RHIC and how this physics relates to the exciting opportunities with an Electron Ion Collider.