High-energy nuclear physics explores nuclear matter under extreme conditions of temperature and density, seeking to unravel the nature of the strong interaction and the internal structure of atomic nuclei. Through heavy ion collisions at velocities close to the speed of light, the conditions that existed in the first microseconds after the Big Bang are recreated in laboratory, allowing the formation of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a state of matter where quarks and gluons, normally confined within hadrons (such as protons and neutrons), move freely. The study of QGP and other phenomena that emerge from these collisions, such as the phase transition between hadronic matter and QGP and the restoration of chiral symmetry, provides crucial information about the strong interaction in non-perturbative regimes and contributes to understanding the evolution of the primordial universe and the behavior of matter in dense astrophysical objects.