Fragmentation Functions in-Medium, Two Particle Correlations and Jets in PHENIX at RHIC

Latest results from the PHENIX experiment at RHIC on these topics will be presented. Results will be shown for Au+Au compared to p-p collisions as well as compared to results from fully reconstructed jets at LHC.Comment: 3 pages 4 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of The 19th Particles and Nuclei International Conference (PANIC11) held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from Sunday July 24th through Friday July 29th 201

Highlights from BNL-RHIC-2012

Recent highlights from Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are reviewed and discussed in the context of the discovery of the strongly interacting Quark Gluon Plasma (sQGP) at RHIC in 2005 as confirmed by results from the CERN-LHC Pb+Pb program. Outstanding RHIC machine operation in 2012 with 3-dimensional stochastic cooling and a new EBIS ion source enabled measurements with Cu+Au, U+U, for which multiplicity distributions are shown, as well as with polarized p-p collisions. Differences of the physics and goals of p-p versus A+A are discussed leading to a review of RHIC results on pi0 suppression in Au+Au collisions and comparison to LHC Pb+Pb results in the same range 5<pT<20 GeV. Results of the RHIC Au+Au energy scan show that high pT suppression takes over from the "Cronin Effect" for c.m. energies > 30 GeV. Improved measurements of direct photon production and correlation with charged particles at RHIC are shown, including the absence of a low pT (thermal) photon enhancement in d+Au collisions. Attempts to understand the apparent equality of the energy loss of light and heavy quarks in the QGP by means of direct measurements of charm and beauty particles at both RHIC and LHC are discussed.Comment: Invited lecture at the International School of Subnuclear Physics, 50th Course, "What we would like LHC to give us", Erice, Sicily, Italy, June 23-July 2, 2012. 16 pages, 12 figure

Waiting for the W and the Higgs

The search for the left-handed $W^{\pm}$ bosons, the proposed quanta of the weak interaction, and the Higgs boson, which spontaneously breaks the symmetry of unification of electromagnetic and weak interactions, has driven elementary-particle physics research from the time that I entered college to the present and has led to many unexpected and exciting discoveries which revolutionized our view of subnuclear physics over that period. In this article I describe how these searches and discoveries have intertwined with my own career.Comment: 23 pages 12 figures, accepted for publication in The European Physical Journal