Quark matter or QCD matter refers to any of a number of hypothetical phases of matter built from quarks and gluons, of which the prominent example is quark-gluon plasma. At different temperatures and
Particle debris trajectories from one of the first lead-ion collisions with the LHC, as recorded by the ALICE detector. The extremely brief appearance of quark matter in the point of collision is inferred from the statistics of the trajectories.