From the QCD vacuum to (strongly coupled) quark-gluon plasma

I start with brief discussion of the role of topological objects in the QCD vacuum, reminding why instantons play a special role in chiral symmetry breaking and hadronic physics. Then I move to high temperature T > Tc domain, describing briefly some experimental discoveries made at RHIC such as robust collective flow phenomena. They are well described by ideal hydrodynamics, with the Equation of State (EoS) in good agreement with that predicted by lattice simulations. However for hydro to work the transport properties of QGP should be quite remarkable. These and other theoretical developments, especially based on lattice simulations, indicate that matter produced at RHIC is a strongly coupled liquid, sQGP for short. Existence of “new spectroscopy” of states, most of them colored, is expected. We also briefly discuss two other “strongly coupled systems”, (i) the strongly coupled supersymmetric theories studied via Maldacena duality; (ii) trapped ultra-cold atoms with very large scattering length.