Bas Hofman, PhD at Nikhef, will defend his thesis Monday 9 March 2026 at 16.00 at the Utrecht University.
Correlated Jet Observables as Probes of the Quark–Gluon Plasma
‘When atomic nuclei collide at nearly the speed of light, they create tiny fireballs hotter and denser than anything else in the universe – even hotter than the core of the Sun. In these extreme conditions, matter melts into its most fundamental state: a liquid-like soup of quarks and gluons known as the quark-gluon plasma. This plasma already existed only millionths of a second after the Big Bang and offers a unique window into how matter as we know it came to be.
In my PhD research, I studied how “jets”, narrow sprays of particles produced in these collisions, are affected as they pass through this plasma. Like bullets moving through water, jets lose energy and change shape when traveling through such dense matter. By carefully analysing how different features of jets change together, I could infer how strongly they interact with the plasma and what this tells us about its microscopic structure.
Using data from the ALICE experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, I developed new ways to measure correlations between jet properties, improving how we extract information from complex, noisy data. These results help us better understand how quarks and gluons behave in extreme conditions, and demonstrate the power of advanced data analysis techniques to uncover patterns hidden deep within enormous datasets.’
The PhD defense will take place in the Academiegebouw, Domplein 29, 3512 JE Utrecht.
More information and a link to the livestream on the website of the Utrecht University.
Supervisor: prof. dr. R.J.M. Snellings
Co-supervisor: dr. M. Verweij
