The German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding the transregional Collaborative Research Centre (CRC/TRR) 211 ‘Strong-Interaction Matter under Extreme Conditions’ for another 3.5 years. The DFG announced the decision today (21 November 2025). The consortium of the universities of Bielefeld, Darmstadt, and Frankfurt am Main will receive around 10 million euros from January 2026 for the third funding phase.

Since July 2017, the CRC/TRR 211 has been investigating the most extreme states of matter in the Universe. The researchers explore what happens when ordinary matter is heated to extremely high temperatures and subjected to enormous pressure. Under such conditions, protons and neutrons dissolve into their constituents – quarks and gluons. These states occur in neutron-star mergers, in heavy-ion collisions at particle accelerators, and in the early Universe shortly after the Big Bang.

‘This Collaborative Research Centre is an outstanding example of top-level theoretical research carried out in the context of major international experiments,’ says Professor Dr Angelika Epple, Rector of Bielefeld University. ‘The fact that the DFG is now funding this consortium for the third time speaks for itself.’

‘The renewed funding is a recognition of our team’s excellent work,’ says particle physicist Professor Dr Sören Schlichting of Bielefeld University, who will serve as spokesperson and lead the CRC in the next phase. A total of 26 principal investigators and another 76 researchers will collaborate in the new funding period within the Transregio. ‘We combine fundamental theoretical research with applications in cosmology, heavy-ion physics, and astrophysics – a globally unique constellation,’ Schlichting says.

In the previous, second funding phase, the consortium published more than 250 scientific papers and organised two major international conferences. The researchers gained new insights into the phase diagram of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) – a kind of map showing the states in which matter exists at different temperatures and densities. They developed methods to infer the properties of extreme matter from experiments at particle accelerators and from observations of neutron-star mergers.

‘Our work provides the theoretical foundations needed to interpret experimental data with precision,’ explains nuclear and particle physicist Professor Dr Guy Moore of TU Darmstadt, the current spokesperson of the CRC and future deputy spokesperson. ‘This is crucial for the major international measurement campaigns that are currently under way or planned.’

In the new funding period, the consortium will investigate, among other things, how matter behaves at extremely high density and which changes of state occur under such conditions. The researchers will also test new theoretical approaches, including methods that use quantum computers.

‘We link fundamental particle physics to observable phenomena,’ says nuclear physicist Professor Dr Hannah Elfner of Goethe University Frankfurt, deputy spokesperson of the CRC. ‘Our research addresses fundamental questions about the development of the Universe – from the behaviour of the elementary constituents of matter to the structure of neutron stars.’

The consortium brings particle physics to the public through formats such as ‘Shots of Science’ in an Irish pub or through talks at schools. In January, the team is expected to present the CRC’s research in a public lecture in the ‘Physics on Saturday’ series.