Speaker: Prof. Richard Seto (UC Riverside)

Title: PHENIX and the future of Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics

Abstract: The field of Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics has made great strides in
the past decade with the establishment of the strongly interacting
Quark Gluon Plasma (sQGP) in high energy collisions of heavy ions at
the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and now at the LHC. The
task for the coming decade will be to understand and make quantitative
measurements of the properties of the sQGP.  I will review the present
understanding of the matter created at RHIC/LHC and outline the
outstanding questions yet to be answered. Finally I will present plans for a
major upgrade of the PHENIX detector which will provide a major new
instrument at RHIC designed to pursue the answers to these questions.