Recent Experimental Highlights in Heavy-Ion Physics

This article summarises a personal selection of recent experimental highlight results in the field of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion physics which have advanced our understanding of hadronic matter under extreme conditions. After a general introduction, the production of light flavour hadrons at Large Hadron Collider energies is addressed going from large systems as created in Pb-Pb collisions to small systems in pp and p-Pb collisions. This discussion of particle production as function of system size is complemented by a short discussion of the search for the QCD critical point and the onset of de-confinement which is addressed by studying particle production as a function of beam energy at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider. Furthermore, the physics of heavy-flavour hadrons and recent findings concerning jets in heavy-ion collisions are very briefly discussed.