Search

The spin polarization of heavy quarks in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC is estimated from effective field theories (EFTs). One EFT is similar to the HQET used at zero temperature. This gives a coupling of the heavy quark spin to colour and electromagnetic fields in heavy-ion collisions. The second EFT describes the interaction of heavy quarks and hydrodynamic modes, and gives the coupling between the heavy quark spin and the local vorticity of the fireball. Using these, we find that the measurement of polarization of the heavy quark from small to moderate p_T at the LHC is predicted with a single free parameter proportional to the vorticity. As a result, the heavy quark polarization is the same whether it is derived from the spin alignment of heavy vector mesons or the polarization of heavy baryons. We also predict that the parameter does not differ much between charm and bottom quarks., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures

We construct a measure of transverse momentum loss of jets in nuclear collisions at LHC directly using measurements of jet cross sections in PbPb and pp collisions. The proposal is shown to be equivalent to R_AA and is equally straightforward to construct. Using data from the ATLAS collaboration at two different collision energies, we show that the proposed measure has small statistical uncertainties. We argue that systematic errors can be easily improved over our estimates by the experimental collaboration to such an extent that it directly probes whether the jet-medium interaction is due to a strongly interacting medium or a weakly interacting plasma. We argue that the current data may marginally favour a strongly interacting medium. On the other hand, assuming that the medium is weakly interacting, we are able to provide estimates of the jet quenching parameter qhat which are in rough agreement with previously reported estimates.

In our world the standard model of particle physics contains within it the fairly intractable theory called QCD. A toy version with two colours is often studied as a model confining and chiral symmetry breaking field theory. Here we investigate the cascade of changes at various distance scales if we make this change within the standard model. It is possible to limit the changes at the hadronic scale. However, the minor changes that occur actually cascade down to the far infrared, into nuclear and atomic physics, and chemistry. Through this it also possibly affects the evolution of stars and galaxies. We remark on this unexpected sensitivity of the universe to physics at the scale of quarks., Comment: Submitted to Indian Journal of Physics memorial issue for Pushan Majumdar

We examine the thermalization of an ensemble of the octet of pseudoscalar mesons, in the isospin symmetric limit, whose interactions are constrained through chiral symmetry, unitarity, and measurements. The reaction amplitudes generate all resonances up to masses of about 2 GeV, with twelve input parameters, namely f_pi, three masses, and eight low energy constants (LECs) of chiral perturbation theory. In linear response theory, we find that matter takes an extremely long time to thermalize. These long relaxation times are directly related to the fact that these mesons are pseudo-Goldstone bosons of chiral symmetry breaking. This result indicates that fireballs created with zero baryon number in heavy-ion collisions will drop out of chemical equilibrium once they enter the chiral symmetry broken phase.

Lattice measurements provide adequate information to fix the parameters of long distance effective field theories in Euclidean time. Using such a theory, we examine the analytic continuation of long distance correlation functions of composite operators at finite temperature from Euclidean to Minkowski space time. We show through an explicit computation that the analytic continuation of the pion correlation function is possible and gives rise to non-trivial effects. Among them is the possibility, supported by lattice computations of Euclidean correlators, that long distance excitations can be understood in terms of (very massive) pions even at temperatures higher than the QCD cross over temperature.

Bayesian analysis of publicly available time series of cases and fatalities in different geographical regions of India during April 2020 is reported. It is found that the initial apparent rapid growthin infections could be partly due to confounding factors such as initial rapid ramp-up of disease surveillance. A brief discussion is given of the fallacies which arise if this possibility is neglected. The growth after April 10 is consistent with a time independent but region dependent exponential. From this, R0 is extracted using both known cases and fatalities. The two estimates are seen to agree in many cases; for these CFR is reported. It is seen that CFR and R0 increase together. Some public health implications of this observation are discussed, including a target doubling interval if medical facilities are to remain adequate.

Epidemic parameters are estimated through Bayesian inference using the daily fatality counts in Mumbai during the period from March 31 to April 14. A doubling time of 5.5 days (median with 95% CrI of 4.6-6.9 days) is observed. In the SEIR model this gives the basic reproduction rate R_0 of 3.4 (median with 95% CrI of 2.4-4.8). Using as input the infection fatality rate and the interval between infection and death, the number of infections in Mumbai is inferred. It is found that the ratio of the number of test positives to the total infections is 0.13\% (median), implying that tests are currently finding 1 out of 750 cases of infection. After correcting for different testing rates, this result is compatible with a measurement of the ratio made recently via serological testing in the USA. From the estimates of the number of infections we infer that the first COVID-19 cases were seeded in Mumbai between late December 2019 and early February 2020. provided the doubling times remained unchanged since then. We remark on some public health implications if the rate of growth cannot be controlled in about a week.

High energy heavy-ion collisions in laboratory produce a form of matter that can test Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions, at high temperatures. One of the exciting possibilities is the existence of thermodynamically distinct states of QCD, particularly a phase of de-confined quarks and gluons. An important step in establishing this new state of QCD is to demonstrate that the system has attained thermal equilibrium. We present a test of thermal equilibrium by checking that the mean hadron yields produced in the small impact parameter collisions as well as grand canonical fluctuations of conserved quantities give consistent temperature and baryon chemical potential for the last scattering surface. This consistency for moments up to third order of the net-baryon number, charge, and strangeness is a key step in the proof that the QCD matter produced in heavy-ion collision attains thermal equilibrium. It is a clear indication for the first time, using fluctuation observables, that a femto-scale system attains thermalization. The study also indicates that the relaxation time scales for the system are comparable to or smaller than the life time of the fireball., Comment: 24 pages and 4 figures

In India the COVID-19 infected population has not yet been accurately established. As always in the early stages of any epidemic, the need to test serious cases first has meant that the population with asymptomatic or mild sub-clinical symptoms has not yet been analyzed. Using counts of fatalities, and previously estimated parameters for the progress of the disease, we give statistical estimates of the infected population. The doubling time is a crucial unknown input parameter which affects these estimates, and may differ strongly from one geographical location to another. We suggest a method for estimating epidemiological parameters for COVID-19 in different locations within a few days, so adding to the information required for gauging the success of public health interventions

We investigate the seemingly ill-defined problem of extracting a ground-state mass from a lattice simulation where the extent of the lattice is not long enough to project out the ground-state properly. We regulate the problem using a Bayesian method. We show that controlling meta-parameters (overconfidence) can allow the data to overcome the input priors (bias). We can write the method as a black-box technique which allows extraction of a ground-state mass, even on a relatively short lattice., Comment: Matches published version

Lattice measurements provide adequate information to fix the parameters of long distance effective field theories in Euclidean time. Using such a theory, we examine the analytic continuation of long distance correlation functions of composite operators at finite temperature from Euclidean to Minkowski space time. There are two definitions of mass in each regime; in Euclidean these are the screening and pole masses. The analytic continuation of these mass parameters to real time is non-trivial. This is in contrast to the situation at zero temperature.

We present the results of an effort to accelerate a Rational Hybrid Monte Carlo (RHMC) program for lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) simulation for 2 flavours of staggered fermions on multiple Kepler K20X GPUs distributed on different nodes of a Cray XC30. We do not use CUDA but adopt a higher level directive based programming approach using the OpenACC platform. The lattice QCD algorithm is known to be bandwidth bound; our timing results illustrate this clearly, and we discuss how this limits the parallelization gains. We achieve more than a factor three speed-up compared to the CPU only MPI program., Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures and 2 tables. Details about benchmarking hardware added along with one paragraph on GPU memory bandwidth measurements. Results unchanged. Replaced to match published version

Using only global symmetries of QCD, we set up an effective model of quarks at finite temperature near the cross over, including all possible terms up to dimension 6. We first treat this in mean field theory. Then we investigate low-energy fluctuations around it up to one-loop order in fermions below the cross over. Static correlation functions of pions and the cross over temperature, both measured on the lattice, completely suffice to fix all parameters of the theory. We examine predictions of this theory, including those for thermodynamic quantities. The results are encouraging., Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures

We present an effective field theory model for QCD at finite temperature with quarks. We discuss the mean field theory, the fixing of parameters, and a prediction for the curvature of the critical line. We proceed to write down a pionic theory of fluctuations around the mean field, and discuss how the parameters of this pionic effective theory descend from the model with quarks., Comment: Proceedings of Quark Matter 2017

Wilson flow is an effective tool for constructing renormalized composite operators. We explore use of the Wilson flow to construct renormalized order parameters for the deconfinement transition in SU(3) gauge theory. We discuss renormalization of the Polyakov loop, and of gluon condensates., Comment: 7 pages, contribution to Lattice 2016, held in Southampton, UK

We report the measurement of quark number susceptibilities (QNS) and their temperature dependence from simulations of QCD with two flavours of light dynamical staggered quarks at finite temperature on 8 * 32^3 lattices. From the radius of convergence of the Taylor expansion we estimate the critical end point. We use a Pade approximant to resum the series expansion and compute the equation of state at finite chemical potential, namely the baryon number density and its contribution to the pressure. We also report the isothermal compressibility of QCD matter at finite baryon density. Finally we explore the freezeout conditions for a measure of fluctuations. We examine some sources of systematic and statistical errors in all of these measurements., Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures

Bayesian techniques are widely used to obtain spectral functions from correlators. We suggest a technique to rid the results of nuisance parameters, ie, parameters which are needed for the regularization but cannot be determined from data. We give examples where the method works, including a pion mass extraction with two flavours of staggered quarks at a lattice spacing of about 0.07 fm. We also give an example where the method does not work.

We compare lattice scales determined from the vector meson mass and the Wilson flow scale w_0 in QCD with two-flavours of rooted naive staggered fermions over a wide range of lattice spacing and quark mass. We find that the distributions of meson correlation functions are non-Gaussian. We modify the statistical analysis to take care of the non-Gaussianity. Current day improvements in the statistical quality of data on hadron correlations further allow us to simplify certain aspects of the analysis of masses. We examine these changes through the analysis of pions and apply them to the vector meson. We compare the flow scale determined using the rho mass with that using Lambda_{MSbar}., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, reference added

We explore the use of Wilson flow to study the deconfinement transition in SU(3) gauge theory. We use the flowed Polyakov loop as a renormalized order parameter for the transition, and use it to renormalize the Polyakov loop. We also study the flow properties of the electric and magnetic gluon condensates, and demonstrate that the difference of the flowed operators shows rapid change across the transition point., Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures. Small changes in figures and discussion, results unchanged. Published version

Heavy-ion collisions provide the only laboratory tests of relativistic quantum field theory at finite temperature. Understanding these is a necessary step in understanding the origins of our universe. These lectures introduce the subject to experimental particle physicists, in the hope that they will be useful to others as well. The phase diagram of QCD is briefly touched upon. Kinematic variables which arise in the collisions of heavy-ions beyond those in the collisions of protons or electrons are introduced. Finally, a few of the signals studied in heavy-ion collisions, and the kind of physics questions which they open up are discussed., Comment: Lectures delivered at the Asia-Europe-Pacific School of High-Energy Physics, Puri, India, November 2014

Scale setting for QCD with two flavours of staggered quarks is examined using Wilson flow over a factor of four change in both the lattice spacing and the pion mass. The statistics needed to keep the errors in the flow scale fixed is found to increase approximately as the inverse square of the lattice spacing. Tree level improvement of the scales t_0 and w_0 is found to be useful in most of the range of lattice spacings we explore. The scale uncertainty due to remaining lattice spacing effects is found to be about 3%. The ratio w_0/\sqrt{t_0} is N_f dependent and we find its continuum limit to be 1.106 \pm 0.007 (stat) \pm 0.005 (syst) for m_\pi w_0 \simeq 0.3.

The superfluid transition of liquid Helium shares an interesting phenomenon with the chiral limit of QCD: the specific heat is finite at the critical point, but has a cusp. From this follows an interesting mixture of universal and non-universal features at the critical point. Through the CP symmetry of chiral QCD, this has implications for the fourth order baryon number susceptibility and susceptibilities of higher orders. Investigations of such a scaling will show us whether O(4) scaling is an accurate description of baryon-free QCD when the pion mass is realistic., Comment: CPOD 2014, Bielefeld

We obtain the baryon number density, n, and the excess contribution to the pressure, Delta P, at finite chemical potential, mu_B, and temperature, T, by resumming the Taylor series expansion in a lattice computation with lattice spacing of 1/(4T) and two flavours of quarks at three different quark masses. The method proceeds by giving a critical mu_B and limits on the critical exponent, and permits reliable estimations of the errors in resummed quantities. We find that n and Delta P are insensitive to the quark mass. We also report the bulk isothermal compressibility, kappa, over a range of T and mu_B.

We argue that the relative yields of $\Upsilon$ states observed at the LHC can be understood as bottomonium states coming to early thermal equilibrium and then freezing out. The bottomonium freezeout temperature is approximately 250 MeV. We examine its systematics as a function of centrality. We remark on the interesting differences seen by the CMS and ALICE experiments in the charmonium sector., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures

We investigate the mechanism of smearing in the APE, Stout, HYP and HEX schemes through their effect on glue and quark Fourier modes. Using this, we non-perturbatively tune the smearing parameters to their optimum values. Smearing causes a super-linear improvement in taste symmetry breaking in the high temperature phase of QCD. We use optimal smearing in the high temperature phase and find close agreement of meson screening masses with weak coupling predictions., Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, presented at the 31st International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2013), 29 July - 3 August 2013, Mainz, Germany

We argue that known systematics of hadron cross sections may cause different particles to freeze out of the fireball produced in heavy-ion collisions at different times. We find that a simple model with two freezeout points is a better description of data than that with a single freezeout, while still remaining predictive. The resulting fits seem to present constraints on the late stage evolution of the fireball, including the tantalizing possibility that the QCD chiral transition influences the yields at sqrt(S)=2700 GeV and the QCD critical point those at sqrt(S)=17.3 GeV.

We investigate near-threshold production of quarkonium resonances in cold nuclear matter through a scaling theory with two exponents which are fixed by existing data on near-threshold J/psi production in proton-nucleus collisions. Interestingly, it seems possible to extend one of the multifractal dimensions to the production of other mesons in cold nuclear matter. The scaling theory can be tested and refined in experiments at the upcoming high-intensity FAIR accelerator complex in GSI., Comment: 2 figures

We present our results on meson and nucleon screening masses in finite temperature two flavour QCD using smeared staggered valence quarks and staggered thin-link sea quarks with different lattice spacings and quark masses. We investigate optimization of smearing by observing its effects on the infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) components of gluon and quark fields. The application of smearing to screening at finite temperature also provides a transparent window into the mechanism of the interplay of smearing and chiral symmetry. The improved hadronic operators show that above the finite temperature cross over, T_c, screening masses are consistent with weak-coupling predictions. There is also evidence for a rapid opening up of a spectral gap of the Dirac operator immediately above T_c., Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures

Using non-perturbative lattice method we studied hadronic screening correlators above and immediately below the deconfinement transition temperature, Tc, in the quenched approximation with lattice spacing of 1/(8T) using clover improved Wilson fermions. Simulations were performed at temperatures T /Tc = 0, 0.95 and 1.5. Mesonic screening correlators show no statistically significant thermal effects below Tc, and clear evidence for weakly interacting quarks above Tc . Baryon screening correlators yield similar physics above Tc, but show precursor effects for chiral symmetry restoration below Tc ., Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, typos corrected

We present results of our simulations of QCD with two light dynamical quarks on a 32^3 X 8 lattice at a current quark mass tuned to have the Goldstone pion mass of about 230 MeV. Employing the Taylor expansion method we proposed earlier, we estimate the radius of convergence of the series for the baryonic susceptibility by using terms up to eighth order. Together with our earlier results, corresponding to the same physical parameters but on coarser lattices at respectively 1.33 times and twice the lattice cut-off (a), we were able to attempt a march towards the continuum limit., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, To appear in the proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions, Quark Matter 2012, August 13-18, 2012, Washington DC

In the last years there has been remarkable progress in the comparison of experimental data on the shape of event-by-event distributions of conserved quantities and lattice thermodynamic predictions based on the grand canonical ensemble. In this talk we discuss how the QCD crossover temperature and the freezeout curve are extracted from the analysis of fluctuations. We report that one can also go further and locate the QCD critical point already from published data. We also list the systematics which must be brought under control in future., Comment: Invited talk at the conference Critical Point and the Onset of Deconfinement, 2011 (Wuhan, China)

Matter described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions, may undergo phase transitions when its temperature and the chemical potentials are varied. QCD at finite temperature is studied in the laboratory by colliding heavy-ions at varying beam energies. We present a test of QCD in the non-perturbative domain through a comparison of thermodynamic fluctuations predicted in lattice computations with the experimental data of baryon number distributions in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. This study provides evidence for thermalization in these collisions, and allows us to find the crossover temperature between normal nuclear matter and a deconfined phase called the quark gluon plasma. This value allows us to set a scale for the phase diagram of QCD., Comment: 16 pages and 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Science

Screening correlators and masses were studied at finite temperature in QCD with two flavours of dynamical staggered quarks on a lattice. The spectrum of screening masses show a hierarchical approach to chiral symmetry restoration. Control of explicit chiral symmetry breaking through the quark mass was shown to be an important step to understanding this phenomenon. No sign of decays was found in the finite temperature scalar meson-like correlators in the confined phase.

Developments in QCD at finite density are reviewed. I begin by discussing some new algorithms which have been applied to other theories with sign problems. Then I discuss the method of analytic continuation in QCD using a series expansion and review some of the results obtained using this method. By now there are several different simulations using the method, and together they give estimates of the systematic lattice effects, which turn out to be controlled. Finally I discuss a direct comparison of some of these lattice predictions with new experimental data which results in a very pleasant agreement., Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the XXVIII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, Lattice2010, June 14-19, 2010, Villasimius, Italy

The thermodynamics of the deconfined phase of the SU(N) gauge theory is studied. Careful study is made of the approach to the continuum limit. The latent heat of the deconfinement transition is studied, for the theories with 3, 4 and 6 colors. Continuum estimates of various thermodynamic quantities are studied, and the approach to conformality investigated. The bulk thermodynamic quantities at different N are compared, to investigate the validity of 't Hooft scaling at these values of N., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. Contribution to the XXVIII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2010), June 2010, Villasimius, Italy

We investigate medium effects on mesonic screening lengths for QCD with 2-flavours of dynamical staggered quarks on lattices with cutoff a=1/6T. Denoting the cross-over temperature by $T_c$, we vary the temperature T from 0.89$T_c$ to 1.92$T_c$, spanning both the hadronic and quark gluon plasma phases. While chiral symmetry restoration in the vector channel appears to take place near $T_c$, it is seen in the scalar channel only above 1.33 $T_c$. Varying spatial lattice sizes, we find very little volume dependence in our results at 0.94 $T_c$. We discuss the stability of the scalar meson at these temperatures., Comment: Talk presented at The XXVIII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, Lattice2010, June 14-19, 2010, Villasimius, Italy

We study the thermodynamics of SU(N_c) pure gauge theories for N_c=3, 4 and 6. The continuum and thermodynamic limits of bulk quantities such as the pressure, energy density and the entropy density are taken by using several different lattice spacings and volumes. There is no window of temperature in which a non-trivial conformal theory describes bulk thermodynamics. We extract the latent heat of the first-order deconfinement phase transitions and observe good scaling with N_c. For all quantities that we measure, strong N_c scaling holds, except, possibly, very close to the transition temperature, T_c; however we are unable to find strong evidence for scaling with the 't Hooft coupling in thermal quantities at the small values of N_c which we study.

We present lattice QCD results along the freezeout curve of heavy-ion collisions for the ongoing RHIC energy scan as well as the LHC heavy-ion runs planned for this year. The skew and kurtosis of the event distribution of baryon number are positive at all energies studied, We predict three ratios of non-linear susceptibilities along the freezeout curve as functions of the colliding energy, Sqrt[S_{NN}]. They have smooth behaviour except in the vicinity of a critical point; this can have multiple benefits.

We investigate the deconfinement transition in SU(Nc) gauge theories, and properties of the deconfined phase. A detailed lattice study of SU(4) and SU(6) gauge theories are conducted, and finite volume and cutoff effects on thermodynamic observables are studied. The scaling of the deconfinement transition point with lattice spacing is used to calculate the scale, Lambda_MSbar. The continuum estimates of the thermodynamic quantities are used to study properties of the gluon plasma. In particular, the approach to conformal limit is studied. We do not find any evidence of a strongly coupled, conformal phase in these theories., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, talk presented at The XXVII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 26-31, 2009, Peking University, Beijing, China

We investigated the finite temperature (T) phase transition for SU(Nc) gauge theory with Nc=4, 6, 8 and 10 at lattice spacing, a, of 1/(6T) or less. We found that these theories have first order transitions at such small a. In many cases we were able to find the critical couplings with precision as good as a few parts in 10^4. We also investigated the use of two-loop renormalization group equations in extrapolating the lattice results to the continuum, thus fixing the temperature scale in units of the phase transition temperature, Tc. We found that when a \le 1/(8Tc) the two-loop extrapolation was accurate to about 1--2%. However, we found that trading Tc for the QCD scale, Lambda_MSbar, increases uncertainties significantly, to the level of about 5--10%., Comment: Small corrections

The current status of the search for the critical end point on the lattice and in experiments is discussed. A naive extrapolation is given of lattice results on the location of the critical end point to the continuum limit with the correct pion mass. An interpretation of current results on fluctuations is provided. A new method of analysis of experimental data is discussed, which provides a check on the removal of backgrounds, comparisons with QCD, and signals an approach to the critical end point., Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Talk given in CPOD 2009

We report lattice computations in SU(N_c) pure gauge theory, where N_c is increased beyond the physical value of 3. We demonstrate two-loop scaling of T_c, thus obtaining the variation of T_c/Lambda_MSbar with N_c, and fixing the temperature scale. We study the equation of state of the gluoN_c plasma, the conformal anomaly, and the approach to the weak coupling theory. We find that the weak-coupling prediction is always closer to the lattice data than the conformal field theory is., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures - To appear in the conference proceedings for Quark Matter 2009, March 30 - April 4, Knoxville, Tennessee

We examine the stability of hadron resonance gas models by extending them to take care of undiscovered resonances through the Hagedorn formula. We find that the influence of unknown resonances on thermodynamics is large but bounded. Hadron resonance gases are internally consistent up to a temperature higher than the cross over temperature in QCD; but by examining quark number susceptibilities we find that their region of applicability seems to end even below the QCD cross over. We model the decays of resonances and investigate the ratios of particle yields in heavy-ion collisions. We find that observables such as hydrodynamics and hadron yield ratios change little upon extending the model. As a result, heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC are insensitive to a possible exponential rise in the hadronic density of states, thus increasing the stability of the predictions of hadron resonance gas models.

We study first and second order theories of relativistic diffusion coupled to hydrodynamics under the approximation, valid at mid-rapidity in the RHIC and LHC, that conserved number densities are much smaller than the entropy density. We identify experimentally accessible quantities of interest, and show that the first and second order theories may lead to radically different evolutions of these quantities. In the first order theory the memory of the initial state is almost completely washed out, whereas in the second order theory it is possible that freezeout occurs at a time when transient dynamics is still on, and the memory of the initial state remains. There are observational consequences which we touch upon. In the first order theory, and for initial conditions when the second order theory mimics the first order, one may be able to put a bound on the diffusion constant., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

In this work we consider the 1-component real scalar $\phi^4$ theory in 4 space-time dimensions on the lattice and investigate the finite size scaling of thermodynamic quantities to study whether the thermodynamic limit is attained. The results are obtained for the symmetric phase of the theory., Comment: To be published in the Proceedings of the 18th DAE-BRNS High Energy Physics Symposium,India (3 pages, 3 figures, revtex4)

I review recent developments in finite temperature lattice QCD which are useful for the study of heavy-ion collisions. I pay particular attention to studies of the equation of state and the light they throw on conformal symmetry and the large N_c limit, and to the structure of the phase diagram for N_f=2+1., Comment: Plenary talk at Quark Matter 2008, Jaipur, India (8 pages, 5 figures)