We study a model in which the confinement scale of quarks in a nucleus of massA changes asA^1/3. This explains theA dependence of structure functions (emc effect) as seen in muon, electron and antineutrino deep inelastic scattering from nuclear targets. We also investigate a prediction of this model—anA dependence of theqcd scale parameter A.

This is a short summary of the systematics observed in various heavy-ion experiments at CERN SPS energies.

This is the report of the QCD working group at WHEPP-6. Discussions and work on heavy ion collisions, polarized scattering, and collider phenomenology are reported.

This is the report of neutrino and astroparticle physics working group at WHEPP-7. Discussions and work on CP violation in long baseline neutrino experiments, ultra high energy neutrinos, supernova neutrinos and water Cerenkov detectors are discussed.

I describe how lattice computations are being used to extract experimentally relevant features of the quark gluon plasma. I deal specifically with relaxation times, photon emissivity, strangeness yields, event-by-event fluctuations of conserved quantities and hydrodynamic flow. Finally I give evidence that the plasma is rather liquid-like in some ways.

Since the turn of the millennium there has been tremendous progress in understanding QCD at finite chemical potential, μ. Apart from qualitative results obtained using models, and exact results at very large μ obtained in weak coupling theory, there has been tremendous progress in getting exact and quantitative results from lattice simulations. I summarize the status of lattice QCD at finite chemical potential —locating the critical end-point in the QCD phase diagram, predicting event-to-event fluctuation rates of conserved quantities, and finding the rate of strangeness production.

The 8th workshop on high energy physics phenomenology (WHEPP-8) was held at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India during January 5–16, 2004. One of the four working groups, group III was dedicated to QCD and heavy ion physics (HIC). The present manuscript gives a summary of the activities of group III during the workshop (see also [1] for completeness). The activities of group III were focused to understand the collective behaviours of the system formed after the collisions of two nuclei at ultra-relativistic energies from the interactions of the elementary degrees of freedom, i.e. quarks and gluons, governed by non-abelian gauge theory, i.e. QCD. This was initiated by two plenary talks on experimental overview of heavy ion collisions and lattice QCD and several working group talks and discussions.

We propose a better differential method for the computation of the equation of state of QCD from lattice simulations. In contrast to the earlier differential method, our technique yields positive pressure for all temperatures including the temperatures in the transition region. Employing it on temporal lattices of 8, 10 and 12 sites and by extrapolating to zero lattice spacing we obtained the pressure, energy density, entropy density, specific heat and speed of sound in quenched QCD for $0.9 \leq T/T_{c} \leq 3$. At high temperatures comparisons of our results are made with those from the dimensional reduction approach and also with those from a conformal symmetric theory.

This talk discusses methods of extending lattice computations at finite temperature into regions of finite chemical potential, and the conditions under which such results from the lattice may be compared to experiments. Such comparisons away from a critical point are absolutely essential for quantitative use of lattice QCD in heavy-ion physics. An outline of various arguments which can then be used to locate the critical point is also presented.

The good agreement between lattice predictions and data for the shape of the distribution of event-by-event fluctuations of the baryon number is discussed. Such comparisons can give fine probes of thermalization, and can be used to provide a direct determination of the cross-over temperature $T_{c}$ QCD. The logic of these comparisons and the systematics involved are discussed. The same methods can be used to further explore the phase diagram.