Jan Rusňák receives the prestigeous award for best thesis

In the week of June 12-15, 2018, the traditional conference “RHIC/AGS Annual Users' Meeting” was held at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), USA. At this year's meeting the newest results from the scientific program at BNL's accelerators RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) and AGS (Alternating Gradient Synchrotron) were highlighted including studies of production of heavy quarks and quarkonia, results from the study of the phase diagram of nuclear matter, small collision systems, jets and proton spin.

An inherent part of the Users' Meeting is also a prestigeous competition for best PhD thesis related to research carried at RHIC and AGS. To our great pleasure, one of the two prizes for best thesis awarded this year, received Dr. Jan Rusňák, who worked on his thesis under supervision of Dr. Jana Bielčíková at the Department of Nuclear Spectroscopy.

Jan Rusňák in his thesis entitled "Jet Reconstruction in Au+Au Collisions at RHIC" carried a systematic study of production of jets, collimated showers of particles, created shortly after the collision of two heavy ions of gold accelerated almost to the speed of light at RHIC. These particle showers can be measured by detectors of the STAR experiment. NPI's scientists participate in the STAR experiment since 2000, when the experiment and RHIC started their operation. Research carried out at RHIC is primarily dedicated to study of extreme states of nuclear matter, in particular detailed study of the phase diagram of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), describing the strong interaction, one of the four fundamental forces in nature. QCD predicts that under sufficiently high temperature and energy density which accessible only at the largest accelerators of the world such as RHIC or the LHC at the laboratory CERN, the regular nuclear matter formed from protons and neutrons transforms to a new phase, the so called quark-gluon plasma (QGP). In this phase basic constituents of matter, quarks and gluons, behave similarly as those shortly after the Big Bang. Results of the awarded Ph.D. thesis of Jan Rusňák brought new and essential knowledge in this field of modern nuclear and particle physics.

BNL director Doon Gibbs is awarding Jan Rusnak with the best thesis certificate.
Photo courtesy Brookhaven National Laboratory.