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A quark–gluon plasma (QGP) is a phase of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) which exists at extremely...

A quark–gluon plasma (QGP) is a phase of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) which exists at extremely high temperature and/or density. This phase consists of (almost) free quarks and gluons, which are the basic building blocks of matter. Experiments at CERN's Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) first tried to create the QGP in the 1980s and 1990s: the results led CERN to announce indirect evidence for a "new state of matter" in 2000. Current experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are continuing this effort. Three new experiments running on CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), ALICE, ATLAS and CMS, will continue studying properties of QGP. The quark–gluon plasma contains quarks and gluons, just as normal (baryonic) matter does. The difference between these two phases of QCD is that in normal matter each quark either pairs up with an anti-quark to form a meson or joins with two other quarks to form a baryon (such as the proton and the neutron). In the QGP, by contrast, these mesons and baryons lose their identities and dissolve into a fluid of quarks and gluons. In normal matter quarks are confined; in the QGP quarks are deconfined. Although the