The quark-gluon plasma

Abstract

In this chapter, we summarize the main properties of the quark-gluon plasma at vanishing overall baryon number density, as so far obtained in finite temperature lattice studies. The defining plasma property, charge screening, will be addressed by studying the effect of introducing test charges into the medium. Subsequently, we note that in a temperature range up to several Tc, the plasma exhibits strong, non-perturbative interaction effects, which can be described in terms of an ideal gas of massive quasi-particles.