Studying the Quark-Gluon Plasma Using Heavy-ion Collisions

The Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) is a hot, dense state of matter in which quarks and gluons, usually confined within protons and neutrons, become deconfined. The universe is theorized to have been a QGP shortly after the Big Bang. This state can also be produced in high energy collisions of nuclei at facilities like the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in order to study its properties and improve our understanding of the strong force, governed by quantum chromodynamics, at extreme temperatures and densities. This talk will present an overview of recent results from heavy-ion collisions at the LHC and RHIC as well as prospects for future measurements including projections for sPHENIX which will start collecting data at RHIC in 2023.