Spinning heavy-ion collisions

Non-central heavy-ion collisions carry an enormous amount of orbital angular momenta. A small fraction of this orbital angular momentum can be transferred to the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) that is produced in the central rapidity region of high-energy heavy-ion collisions in the form of global and local vorticities. Strong interaction within this spinning QGP and under the strong interaction force can lead to spin polarization of quarks through spin-orbital and spin-field coupling. As a consequence, final hadrons with non-zero spin (hyperons with spin 1/2 and phi vector mesons with spin 1) from the hadronization of the QGP will be polarized. Experimental and phenomenological studies of these polarization phenomena can shed light on the structure of QGP and the nature of the strong interaction force in high-energy heavy-ion collisions.