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Distillation and survival of strange quark matter droplets in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions
(1991)
Recently it has been suggested that rather cold droplets of absolutely stable or metastable strange-quark matter may be distilled in heavy-ion collisions during the phase transition from a baryon-rich quark-gluon plasma (QGP) to hadron matter. Here we present a model describing the hadronization of the QGP through particle emission, which is based solely on thermodynamical arguments. Pions and K+’s and K0’s carry away entropy and antistrangeness from the system, thus facilitating the cooling process and the strangelet formation. Our results are supported by revised more sophisticated rate calculations. Two rather unexpected results are obtained when this model is applied to the investigation of strangelet production. The strangeness separation mechanism and the formation process works well even for higher initial entropies per baryon, tantamount to higher bombarding energies. The surviving strangelets have a rather high strangeness content, fs∼1.2–2 [i.e., Z/A∼(-0.1)–(-0.5)]. Hence droplets of strange-quark matter with a baryon number of ∼10–30 and with a negative charge may be produced. They may serve as a unique signature for the transient formation of a quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions.
The statistical model is used to illustrate the consequences of a successive binary decay mechanism as the initial nuclear excitation is pushed towards the limits of stability. The partition of the excitation energy between light and heavy fragments is explicitly calculated, as are the consequences of the decay of the primary light fragments to particle-bound residual nuclei which would be observed experimentally. The test nucleus 100 44 Ru is considered at initial excitations of 100, 200, 400, and 800 MeV. Exit channels of n, p, and α; and 100 clusters of 3 ≤ Z ≤ 20 ≤ 4, 6 ≤ A ≤ 48 are considered from all nuclides in the deexcitation cascade. The total primary and final cluster yields are shown versus Z and initial excitation. The primary versus final yields are also shown individually for 12C, 26Mg, and 48Ca. We show how multifragmentation yields will change with the excitation energy due to a successive binary decay mechanism. Measurements that may be prone to misinterpretation are discussed, as are those that should be representative of initial nucleus excitation.
We present a new type of flow analysis, based on a particle-pair correlation function, in which there is no need for an event-by-event determination of the reaction plane. Consequently, the need to correct for dispersion in an estimated reaction plane does not arise. Our method also offers the option to avoid any influence from particle misidentification. Using this method, streamer chamber data for collisions of Ar+KCl and Ar+BaI2 at 1.2 GeV/nucleon are compared with predictions of a nuclear transport model.
Nuclear transport models are important tools for interpretation of many heavy-ion experiments and are essential in efforts to probe the nuclear equation of state. In order to fulfill these roles, the model predictions should at least agree with observed single-particle-inclusive momentum spectra; however, this agreement has recently been questioned. The present work compares the Vlasov-Uehling-Uhlenbeck model to data for mass-symmetric systems ranging from 12C+12C to 139La+139La, and we find good agreement within experimental uncertainties at 0.4A and 0.8A GeV. For currently available data, these uncertainties are too large to permit effective nucleon-nucleon scattering cross sections in the nuclear medium to be extracted at a useful level of precision.
We study the transition from fusion-fission phenomena at about 20 MeV/nucleon multifragmentation at 100–200 MeV/nucleon in the reaction 16O+80Br employing the quantum molecular dynamics model. The time evolution of the density and mass distribution, the charged-particle multiplicity, and spectra as well as angular distributions of light particles are investigated. The results exhibit the transition of the disassembly mechanism, but no sharp change is found. The results are in good agreement with recently measured 4-Pi data.
We investigate the onset of multifragmentation employing an improved version of the N-body ‘‘quantum’’ molecular-dynamics approach. We study in detail the reaction 18O+197Au at 84 MeV/nucleon and find good agreement between the calculated results and the data for the double-differential proton cross section, the mass yield, the multiplicity, the kinetic energy of the fragments, and even for the kinematic correlations between intermediate mass fragments (IMF’s), which have been measured in this experiment for the first time. We observe a strong correlation between the impact parameter and both the size of the target remnant as well as the average proton multiplicity. Hence both observables can be used to determine the impact parameter experimentally. The IMF’s come from the most central collisions. The calculations confirm the experimental result that they are not emitted from an equilibrated system. Although the inclusive energy spectra look thermal, we cannot identify an impact parameter-independent isotropically emitting source. Even in central collisions global equilibrium is not observed. We find that multifragment emission at this bombarding energy is caused by a process very similar to that proposed in the macroscopic cold multifragmentation model. Thus it has a different origin than at beam energies around 1 GeV/nucleon, although the mass yield has an almost identical slope.