25.75.-q Relativistic heavy-ion collisions (collisions induced by light ions studied to calibrate relativistic heavy-ion collisions should be classified under both 25.75.-q and sections 13 or 25 appropriate to the light ions)
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Mid-rapidity transverse mass spectra and multiplicity densities of charged and neutral kaons are reported for Au + Au collisions at √sNN = 130 GeV at RHIC. The spectra are exponential in transverse mass, with an inverse slope of about 280 MeV in central collisions. The multiplicity densities for these particles scale with the negative hadron pseudo-rapidity density. The charged kaon to pion ratios are K+/π− = 0.161± 0.002(stat) ± 0.024(syst) and K−/π− = 0.146± 0.002(stat) ± 0.022(syst) for the most central collisions. The K+/π− ratio is lower than the same ratio observed at the SPS while the K−/π− is higher than the SPS result. The ratios are enhanced by about 50% relative to p + p and p¯ + p collision data at similar energies.
Dilepton production in pp and Au+Au nucleus–nucleus collisions at s=200GeV as well as in In+In and Pb+Au at 158AGeV is studied within the microscopic HSD transport approach. A comparison to the data from the PHENIX Collaboration at RHIC shows that standard in-medium effects of the ρ,ω vector mesons—compatible with the NA60 data for In+In at 158AGeV and the CERES data for Pb+Au at 158AGeV—do not explain the large enhancement observed in the invariant mass regime from 0.2 to 0.5 GeV in Au+Au collisions at s=200 GeV relative to pp collisions.
We solve the coupled Wong Yang–Mills equations for both U(1) and SU(2) gauge groups and anisotropic particle momentum distributions numerically on a lattice. For weak fields with initial energy density much smaller than that of the particles we confirm the existence of plasma instabilities and of exponential growth of the fields which has been discussed previously. Also, the SU(2) case is qualitatively similar to U(1), and we do find significant “abelianization” of the non-Abelian fields during the period of exponential growth. However, the effect nearly disappears when the fields are strong. This is because of the very rapid isotropization of the particle momenta by deflection in a strong field on time scales comparable to that for the development of Yang–Mills instabilities. This mechanism for isotropization may lead to smaller entropy increase than collisions and multiplication of hard gluons, which is interesting for the phenomenology of high-energy heavy-ion collisions.
We propose that the measurement of the transverse momentum dependence of the double ratio of the nuclear modification factors of charm and bottom jets, RAAc(pT)/RAAb(pT), in central nuclear collisions at the LHC will provide an especially robust observable that can be used to differentiate Standard Model perturbative QCD predictions from recently proposed strong coupling string drag models derived using the AdS/CFT conjecture.
We calculate the antibaryon-to-baryon ratios, p̄/p,Λ̄/Λ,Ξ/Ξ, and Ω/Ω for Au+Au collisions at RHIC (sNN=200 GeV). The effects of strong color fields associated with an enhanced strangeness and diquark production probability and with an effective decrease of formation times are investigated. Antibaryon-to-baryon ratios increase with the color field strength. The ratios also increase with the strangeness content |S|. The netbaryon number at midrapidity considerably increases with the color field strength while the netproton number remains roughly the same. This shows that the enhanced baryon transport involves a conversion into the hyperon sector (hyperonization) which can be observed in the (Λ−Λ̄)/(p−p̄) ratio.
Production of J/ψ mesons in heavy ion collisions is considered within the statistical coalescence model. The model is in agreement with the experimental data of the NA50 Collaboration for Pb+Pb collisions at 158 AGeV in a wide centrality range, including the so-called “anomalous” suppression domain. The model description of the J/ψ data requires, however, strong enhancement of the open charm production in central Pb+Pb collisions. This model prediction may be checked in the future SPS runs.
We consider J/ψ production in heavy ion collisions at RHIC energies in the statistical coalescence model with exact (canonical ensemble) charm conservation. Charm quark–antiquark pairs are assumed to be created in primary hard parton collisions, but open and hidden charm particles are formed at the hadronization stage according to the laws of statistical mechanics. The dependence of the J/ψ production on both the number of nucleon participants and the collision energy is studied. The model predicts J/ψ suppression for low energies, whereas at the highest RHIC energy the model reveals J/ψ enhancement.
In the work presented herein the microscopic transport model BAMPS (Boltzmann Approach to Multi-Parton Scatterings) is applied to simulate the time evolution of the hot partonic medium that is created in Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and in Pb+Pb collisions at the recently started Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The study is especially focused on the investigation of the nuclear modification factor R_{AA}, that quantifies the suppression of particle yields at large transverse momentum with respect to a scaled proton+proton reference, and the simultaneous description of the collective properties of the medium in terms of the elliptic flow v_{2} within a common framework.
The production of quarkonia, the bound state of an heavy quark with its anti-particle, has for a long time been seen as a key process to understand the properties of nuclear matter in a relativistic heavy-ion collision. This thesis presents studies on the production of quarkonia in heavy-ion collisions at the new Large Hadron collider (LHC). The focus is set on the decay of J/Psi and Upsilon-states into their di-electronic decay channel, measured within the central detectors of the ALICE detector.
The search for a modification of hadron properties inside nuclear matter at normal and/or high temperature and density is one of the more interesting issues of modern nuclear physics. Dilepton experiments, by providing interesting results, give insight into the properties of strong interaction and the nature of hadron mass generation. One of these research tools is the HADES spectrometer. HADES is a high acceptance dilepton spectrometer installed at the heavy-ion synchrotron (SIS) at GSI, Darmstadt. The main physics motivation of HADES is the measurement of e+e- pairs in the invariant-mass range up to 1 GeV/c2 in pion- and proton-induced reactions, as well as in heavy-ion collisions. The goal is to investigate the properties of the vector mesons rho, omega and of other hadrons reconstructed from e+e- decay pairs. Dileptons are penetrating probes allowing to study the in-medium properties of hadrons. However, the measurement of such dilepton pairs is difficult because of a very large background from other processes in which leptons are created. This thesis presents the analysis of the data provided by the first physic run done with the HADES spectrometer. For the first time e+e- pairs produced in C+C collisions at an incident energy of 2 GeV per nucleon have been collected with sufficient statistics. This experiment is of particular importance since it allows to address the puzzling pair excess measured by the former DLS experiment at 1.04 AGeV. The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter presents the physics case which is addressed in the work. In the second chapter the HADES spectrometer is introduced with the characteristic of specific detectors which are part of the spectrometer. Chapter three focusses on the issue of charged-particle identification. The fourth chapter discusses the reconstruction of the di-electron spectra in C+C collisions. In this part of the thesis a comparison with theoretical models is included as well. The conclusion and final remarks are given in chapter five.
In this work we study the non-equilibrium dynamics of a quark-gluon plasma, as created in heavy-ion collisions. We investigate how big of a role plasma instabilities can play in the isotropization and equilibration of a quark-gluon plasma. In particular, we determine, among other things, how much collisions between the particles can reduce the growth rate of unstable modes. This is done both in a model calculation using the hard-loop approximation, as well as in a real-time lattice simulation combining both classical Yang-Mills-fields as well as inter-particle collisions. The new extended version of the simulation is also used to investigate jet transport in isotropic media, leading to a cutoff-independent result for the transport coefficient $hat{q}$. The precise determination of such transport coefficients is essential, since they can provide important information about the medium created in heavy-ion collisions. In anisotropic media, the effect of instabilities on jet transport is studied, leading to a possible explanation for the experimental observation that high-energy jets traversing the plasma perpendicular to the beam axis experience much stronger broadening in rapidity than in azimuth. The investigation of collective modes in the hard-loop limit is extended to fermionic modes, which are shown to be all stable. Finally, we study the possibility of using high energy photon production as a tool to experimentally determine the anisotropy of the created system. Knowledge of the degree of local momentum-space anisotropy reached in a heavy-ion collision is essential for the study of instabilities and their role for isotropization and thermalization, because their growth rate depends strongly on the anisotropy.
This article generalizes Schwinger’s mechanism for particles production in the arbitrary finite field volume. McLerran-Venugopolan(MV) model and iterative solution of DGLAP equation in the double leading log approximation for small x gluon distribution function were used to derive the new formula for initial chromofield energy density. This initial chromofield energy is distributed among color neutral clusters or strings of different length. This strings are stretched by receding nucleus. From the proposed mechanism of string fragmentation or color field decay based on exact solution of Dirac equation in the different finite volume, the new formulae for esimated baryon kinetic energy loss and rapidity spectrum of produced partons were derived.
In der vorliegenden Dissertation werden mit einem chiralen SU(3)-Modell die thermodynamischen Eigenschaften von stark wechselwirkender hadronischer Materie und die mikroskopischen Medium-Eigenschaften von Hadronen bei hohen Temperaturen und hohen Baryonen-Dichten untersucht. Das verwendete chirale Modell ist ein erweitertes sigma-omega-Modell in Mittlerer-Feld-Näherung (Mean-Field) mit baryonischen und mesonischen effektiven Freiheitsgraden; es basiert auf spontan gebrochener chiraler Symmetrie und Skaleninvarianz. Das Phasenübergangsverhalten des chiralen Modells wird systematisch untersucht und dabei gezeigt, dass es signifikant von den Kopplungen zusätzlicher schwererer hadronischer Freiheitsgrade ('Resonanzen') abhängt. Durch entsprechende Ankopplung des niedrigsten baryonischen Dekupletts kann ein Phasendiagramm in qualitativer Übereinstimmung mit aktuellen Vorhersagen der Gitter-QCD erreicht werden. Alternativ wird die Ankopplung einer schweren baryonischen Test-Resonanz untersucht, welche effektiv für das Spektrum der schweren hadronischen Zustände steht. Hier ergibt sich für einen bestimmten Bereich der Kopplungen sogar eine quantitative Übereinstimmung zu den Gitter-QCD-Vorhersagen bei gleichzeitig guter Beschreibung der Grundzustandseigenschaften von Kernmaterie. Für diese Zustandsgleichung werden Vorhersagen (innerhalb der Modellannahmen) zu geplanten Experimenten gemacht -- konkret wird gezeigt, dass der Phasenübergangsbereich für das CBM Experiment des geplanten Beschleunigerzentrums FAIR an der GSI Darmstadt experimentell zugänglich ist. Weiter wird das chirale Modell auf die Beschreibung von experimentellen Teilchenzahlverhältnissen (Yield-Ratios) aus Schwerionen-Kollisionen von AGS, SPS und RHIC angewendet. Studiert werden Parametersätze mit stark unterschiedlichen Phasendiagrammen aufgrund unterschiedlicher Ankopplung des baryonischen Dekupletts sowie ein ideales Hadronengas. Bei den niedrigen und mittleren Kollisionsenergien zeigt sich eine verbesserte Beschreibung durch die chiralen Parametersätze im Vergleich zum idealen Hadronengas, besonders deutlich für Parametersätze mit Phasendiagramm ähnlich der Vorhersage aus der Gitter-QCD. Die Wechselwirkung im chiralen Modell führt zu Medium-Modifikationen der chemischen Potentiale und der Hadronenmassen. Die resultierenden Ausfrierparameter mu und T sind deshalb gegenüber dem nichtwechselwirkenden Fall signifikant verändert. An den Ausfrierpunkten zeigen sich deutliche Abweichungen der effektiven Massen von den Vakuummassen (5 bis 15 %) und des effektiven baryo-chemischen Potentials vom ursprünglichen Wert (bis zu 20 %). Ferner werden universelle Kriterien für das Ausfrieren diskutiert und isentrope Expansion zu den Ausfrierpunkten untersucht, wo sich eine starke Abhängigkeit der Trajektorien von der Zustandsgleichung ergibt. Schließlich wird der Einfluss des Dilaton-Felds (Gluonkondensat) auf das Phasenübergangsverhalten bei mu=0 studiert, indem das Gluonkondensat an die Dekuplett-Baryonen gekoppelt wird. Es zeigt sich, dass dadurch eine Restauration der Skaleninvarianz im Modell möglich wird, die gleichzeitig auch eine vollständige Restauration der chiralen Symmetrie bewirkt. Die Restauration der Skaleninvarianz erfolgt erst bei Temperaturen, die oberhalb der chiralen Restauration (im nichtseltsamen Sektor) liegen. Diese Modellerweiterung ermöglicht es, zukünftig das Phasenübergangsverhalten -- Restauration von chiraler Symmetrie und Skaleninvarianz -- auch bei nichtverschwindenden Baryonendichten zu untersuchen. Die Resultate dieser Arbeit zeigen die Wichtigkeit der schweren hadronischen Zustände, der Resonanzen, für das QCD-Phasendiagramm. Für die Zukunft ist eine Ankopplung des gesamten hadronischen Massenspektrums an das Modell erstrebenswert, wie sich sowohl aus der Untersuchung der Modellerweiterung um eine Test-Resonanz als auch aus der Anwendung auf experimentelle Teilchenzahlverhältnisse ergibt.
Nuclear matter, that takes the form of protons and neutrons under normal conditions, is subject to a phase transition at high temperatures and densities, liberating the quarks and gluons that are usually confined in nucleons and creating a medium of free partons: the Quark-Gluon-Plasma. It is generally believed that this state of matter can be created in relativistic collisions of heavy nuclei. The study of the medium created in these collisions is the subject of heavy-ion physics. One topic within this field are particles with high transverse momentum, that are created in initial hard collisions between partons of the incoming nuclei. The energetic partons lose energy due to interactions with the medium before they fragment into a jet of hadrons. Due to momentum conservation, these jets are usually created as back-to-back pairs, or less commonly as three-jet or photon-jet events, where a single jet is balanced by a hard photon. The energy loss can be measured using correlations between particles with high transverse momenta. A trigger particle is selected with very high transversemomentum and the distribution of the azimuthal angle of associated particles in the same event is studied, relative to the azimuth of the trigger particle.These azimuthal correlations show a peak for opening angles around 0 from particles selected from the same jet, and a second peak at opening angles around 180 degrees from back-to-back di-jets. Random combinations with the underlying event generate a flat background, extending over the full range of opening angles. The STAR experiment observed a modification of these correlations in central Au+Au collisions, where trigger particles with 4GeV < pT(trigger) < 6GeV and associated particles with 2GeV < pT(trigger) < 4GeV were selected. A strong suppression has been observed for away-side correlations in central Au+Au collisions, relative to p+p, d+Au and peripheral Au+Au data. This can be explained by assuming two partons going in opposite directions, where at least one has to travel a large distance through the medium, causing energy loss and effectively removing the event from the analysis. For near-side correlations, no significant modification has been observed, which can be explained by surface emission, assuming that the observed jets have travelled only a short distance in themedium, not leaving enough time for interactions with the medium. Both trigger- and associated particles in a correlation analysis with charged hadrons are subject to modifications due to the medium. This can be avoided by using photon-jet events instead of di-jets, because the photon does not interact with the medium and therefore provides the best available measure of the properties of the opposite jet in the presence of the underlying event. This thesis studies azimuthal correlations between regions of high energy deposition in the electro-magnetic calorimeter as trigger- and charged tracks as associated particles. The data sample had been enriched by online event selection, allowing for the selection of trigger particles with a transverse energy of more than 10GeV and associated particles with more than 2,3 or 4 GeV. The away-side yield per trigger particle is strongly suppressed like in correlations between charged particles. The near-side yield is also reduced by about a factor two, clearly different from charged correlations. The trigger particles are a mixture of photon pairs from the decays of neutral pions and single photons, mainly from photon-jet events, with small contributions from other hadron decays and fragmentation photons. Pythia simulations predict a ratio of neutral pions to prompt photons of 3.5:1 in p+p collisions with the same cuts as in the presented analysis. Single particle suppression further reduces this ratio in central Au_Au collisions, down to about 0.8:1, indicating that the majority of trigger particles in central Au+Au collisions are prompt photons. The increasing fraction of prompt photon triggers without an accompanying jet and therefore zero associated yield reduces the average yield per trigger particle. The magnitude of the observed effect agrees well with the expectation from Pythia simulations and the assumption of a single particle suppression by a factor 4-5. An analysis of away-side correlations is more difficult, because both photon-jet and di-jet events contribute. The aim is the separation of these two contributions. As a clear separation is not possible with the available dataset, a comparison with two different scenarios is given, where a surprisingly small suppression by only a factor of about 5 is favoured for both dijet- and photon-jet-correlations. A separate measurement of both contributions will be possible by a shower-shape analysis with the EM calorimeter or a comparison with charged correlations in the same kinematic region.
We propose to measure azimuthal correlations of heavy-flavor hadrons to address the status of thermalization at the partonic stage of light quarks and gluons in high-energy nuclear collisions. In particular, we show that hadronic interactions at the late stage cannot significantly disturb the initial back-to-back azimuthal correlations of DDbar pairs. Thus, a decrease or the complete absence of these initial correlations does indicate frequent interactions of heavy-flavor quarks and also light partons in the partonic stage, which are essential for the early thermalization of light partons.
We develop a 1+1 dimensional hydrodynamical model for central heavy-ion collisions at ultrarelativistic energies. Deviations from Bjorken's scaling are taken into account by implementing finite-size profiles for the initial energy density. The calculated rapidity distributions of pions, kaons and antiprotons in central Au+Au collisions at the c.m. energy 200 AGeV are compared with experimental data of the BRAHMS Collaboration. The sensitivity of the results to the choice of the equation of state, the parameters of initial state and the freeze-out conditions is investigated. The best fit of experimental data is obtained for a soft equation of state and Gaussian-like initial profiles of the energy density.
We calculate the asymptotic high-energy amplitude for electrons scattering at one ion, as well as at two colliding ions, by means of perturbation theory. We show that the interaction with one ion eikonalizes and that the interaction with two ions causally decouples. We are able to put previous results on perturbative grounds and propose further applications for the obtained rules for interactions on the light cone. We discuss the implications of the eikonal amplitude on the pair production probability in ultrarelativistic peripheral heavy-ion collisions. In this context the Weizsäcker-Williams method is shown to be exact in the ultrarelativistic limit, irrespective of the produced particles’ mass. A new equivalent single-photon distribution is derived, which correctly accounts for Coulomb distortions. The impact on single-photon induced processes is discussed.
The rapidity dependence of the single- and double- neutron to proton ratios of nucleon emission from isospin-asymmetric but mass-symmetric reactions Zr+Ru and Ru+Zr at energy range 100 ~ 800 A MeV and impact parameter range 0 ~ 8 fm is investigated. The reaction system with isospin-asymmetry and mass-symmetry has the advantage of simultaneously showing up the dependence on the symmetry energy and the degree of the isospin equilibrium. We find that the beam energy- and the impact parameter dependence of the slope parameter of the double neutron to proton ratio (F_D) as function of rapidity are quite sensitive to the density dependence of symmetry energy, especially at energies E_b ~ 400 A MeV and reduced impact parameters around 0.5. Here the symmetry energy effect on the F_D is enhanced, as compared to the single neutron to proton ratio. The degree of the equilibrium with respect to isospin (isospin mixing) in terms of the F_D is addressed and its dependence on the symmetry energy is also discussed.
We argue that the shape of the system-size dependence of strangeness production in nucleus-nucleus collisions can be understood in a picture that is based on the formation of clusters of overlapping strings. A string percolation model combined with a statistical description of the hadronization yields a quantitative agreement with the data at sqrt s_NN = 17.3 GeV. The model is also applied to RHIC energies.
We investigate the sensitivity of several observables to the density dependence of the symmetry potential within the microscopic transport model UrQMD (ultrarelativistic quantum molecular dynamics model). The same systems are used to probe the symmetry potential at both low and high densities. The influence of the symmetry potentials on the yields of pi-, pi+, the pi-/pi+ ratio, the n/p ratio of free nucleons and the t/3He ratio are studied for neutron-rich heavy ion collisions (208Pb+208Pb, 132Sn+124Sn, 96Zr+96Zr) at E_b=0.4A GeV. We find that these multiple probes provides comprehensive information on the density dependence of the symmetry potential.
Ultrarelativistische Schwerionenstöße werden seit etwa 15 Jahren untersucht, um Kernmaterie unter extremen Bedingungen zu erforschen; in Kollisionen schwerer Atomkerne kann bei hohen Einschußenergien Kernmaterie stark komprimiert und aufgeheizt werden. Die Bedeutung dieser Experimente wird durch Berechnungen der Quanten-Chromo-Dynamik auf raumzeitlichen Gittern hervorgehoben, die bei ausreichend hoher Energiedichte eine Phase voraussagen, in der die Quarks nicht mehr in Hadronen gebunden sind, sondern zusammen mit den Gluonen ein partonisches System ausbilden. Ist das System hinreichend groß und equilibriert, wird es als Quark-Gluon-Plasma bezeichnet. Die als Signatur für das Überschreiten der Phasengrenze vorgeschlagene erhöhte Produktion Seltsamkeit tragender Teilchen wurde in der Gegenüberstellung von elementaren Proton+Proton-Interaktionen und Kern+Kern-Stößen experimentell über einen weiten Energiebereich bestätigt. Eine solche Überhöhung kann aber auch durch rein hadronische Phänomene hervorgerufen werden. So tritt beispielsweise in statistischen Modellen bereits in einem Hadrongas eine Seltsamkeitserhöhung aufgrund des Übergangs von einem kanonischen zu einem großkanonischen Ensemble mit steigender Systemgröße in Kern+Kern-Stößen auf. Das motivierte die Messung der Systemgrößenabhängigkeit der Seltsamkeitsproduktion bei einer Einschußenergie, bei der in den Stößen der größten Kerne die partonische Phase erreicht werden sollte, während Proton-Proton-Interaktionen überlicherweise als hadronische Systeme betrachtet werden. In Kollisionen von Kohlenstoff- und Siliziumkernen bei 158 GeV pro Nukleon, deren Untersuchung Gegenstand dieser Arbeit ist, kann möglicherweise die Umgebung der Phasengrenze abgetastet werden. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit gilt der Frage nach dem Mechanismus der Seltsamkeitsproduktion in diesen Reaktionen. Das Experiment wurde am SPS-Beschleuniger am CERN in Genf durchgeführt, erstmals wurden dort leichte Projektilkerne durch den Aufbruch des primären Bleistrahls an einem Produktionstarget erzeugt. Das Herzstück des NA49-Spektrometers, mit dem die Daten aufgezeichnet wurden, sind die vier großvolumigen Spurendriftkammern, die die große Akzeptanz ermöglichen. Die Lambda- und Antilambda-Hyperonen aus C+C und Si+Si Kollisionen werden anhand ihrer Zerfallstopologie rekonstruiert und ihre Impulsverteilungen über einen weiten Bereich gemessen; mit zusätzlichen Annahmen werden schließlich die totalen Multiplizitäten extrapoliert. Die Produktion der Hyperonen pro Pion ist im Vergleich zu p+p-Daten bereits in C+C-Reaktionen deutlich erhöht, in Si+Si--Kollisionen ist annähernd der Wert aus Pb+Pb-Stößen erreicht. Mehrere Ursachen für diese Beobachtung werden diskutiert und mögliche Interpretationen vorgeschlagen. Der Grad an chemischer Equilibration und die Lage des Ausfrierpunktes im Phasendiagramm und im Vergleich zu anderen Stoßsystemen wird besprochen. Die Rapiditätsspektren der Lambda-Hyperonen entsprechen zunehmendem Stopping mit steigender Anzahl von Stößen pro Nukleon. Dadurch wird die Energie pro Nukleon im Feuerball erhöht, was zunehmende kinetische Energie der Teilchen und eine ansteigende Teilchenproduktion erzeugt. Die Verbreiterung der Transversalimpulsspektren mit der Systemgröße fügt sich in der Tat in das Bild anwachsenden radialen Flußes ein.
Compelling evidence for the creation of a new form of matter has been claimed to be found in Pb+Pb collisions at SPS. We discuss the uniqueness of often proposed experimental signatures for quark matter formation in relativistic heavy ion collisions. It is demonstrated that so far none of the proposed signals like J/psi meson production/suppression, strangeness enhancement, dileptons, and directed flow unambigiously show that a phase of deconfined matter has been formed in SPS Pb+Pb collisions. We emphasize the need for systematic future measurements to search for simultaneous irregularities in the excitation functions of several observables in order to come close to pinning the properties of hot, dense QCD matter from data.
The equilibration of hot and dense nuclear matter produced in the central cell of central Au+Au collisions at RHIC (sqrt s = 200 A GeV) energies is studied within a microscopic transport model. The pressure in the cell becomes isotropic at t approx 5 fm/c after beginning of the collision. Within the next 15 fm/c the expansion of matter in the cell proceeds almost isentropically with the entropy per baryon ratio S/A approx 150, and the equation of state in the (P,epsilon) plane has a very simple form, P=0.15 epsilon. Comparison with the statistical model of an ideal hadron gas indicates that the time t approx 20 fm/c may be too short to reach the fully equilibrated state. Particularly, the creation of long-lived resonance-rich matter in the cell decelerates the relaxation to chemical equilibrium. This resonance-abundant state can be detected experimentally after the thermal freeze-out of particles.
Local equilibrium in heavy ion collisions. Microscopic model versus statistical model analysis
(1999)
The assumption of local equilibrium in relativistic heavy ion collisions at energies from 10.7 AGeV (AGS) up to 160 AGeV (SPS) is checked in the microscopic transport model. Dynamical calculations performed for a central cell in the reaction are compared to the predictions of the thermal statistical model. We find that kinetic, thermal and chemical equilibration of the expanding hadronic matter are nearly approached late in central collisions at AGS energy for t >= 10 fm/c in a central cell. At these times the equation of state may be approximated by a simple dependence P ~= (0.12-0.15) epsilon. Increasing deviations of the yields and the energy spectra of hadrons from statistical model values are observed for increasing energy, 40 AGeV and 160 AGeV. These violations of local equilibrium indicate that a fully equilibrated state is not reached, not even in the central cell of heavy ion collisions at energies above 10 AGeV. The origin of these findings is traced to the multiparticle decays of strings and many-body decays of resonances.
We investigate transverse hadron spectra from relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions which reflect important aspects of the dynamics - such as the generation of pressure - in the hot and dense zone formed in the early phase of the reaction. Our analysis is performed within two independent transport approaches (HSD and UrQMD) that are based on quark, diquark, string and hadronic degrees of freedom. Both transport models show their reliability for elementary pp as well as light-ion (C+C, Si+Si) reactions. However, for central Au+Au (Pb+Pb) collisions at bombarding energies above ~ 5 A.GeV the measured K+- transverse mass spectra have a larger inverse slope parameter than expected from the calculation. Thus the pressure generated by hadronic interactions in the transport models above ~ 5 A.GeV is lower than observed in the experimental data. This finding shows that the additional pressure - as expected from lattice QCD calculations at finite quark chemical potential and temperature - is generated by strong partonic interactions in the early phase of central Au+Au (Pb+Pb) collisions.
REVTEX, 27 pages incl. 10 figures and 3 tables; Phys. Rev. C (in press) Journal-ref: Phys.Rev. C62 (2000) 064906. We study the local equilibrium in the central V = 125 fm3 cell in heavy-ion collisions at energies from 10.7 A GeV (AGS) to 160 A GeV (SPS) calculated in the microscopic transport model. In the present paper the hadron yields and energy spectra in the cell are compared with those of infinite nuclear matter, as calculated within the same model. The agreement between the spectra in the two systems is established for times t >= 10 fm/c in the central cell. The cell results do not deviate noticeably from the infinite matter calculations with rising incident energy, in contrast to the apparent discrepancy with predictions of the statistical model (SM) of an ideal hadron gas. The entropy of this state is found to be very close to the maximum entropy, while hadron abundances and energy spectra differ significantly from those of the SM.