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Title: Production and signature of extremely dense baryon matter produced with the Au beam at the AGS

Journal Article · · Bulletin of the American Physical Society
OSTI ID:243679
 [1]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)

The Au beam at the BNL-AGS offers the unique opportunity to study extremely compressed nuclear matter by colliding two truly heavy ions. This is the first heavy ion beam at an ultrarelativistic energy (beam momentum 11.6 AGeV/c), while its predecessors, e.g. at the BEVALAC, were restricted to the one GeV energy range. In this work such reactions are studied in the framework of a microscopic phasespace model (RGMD) in which resonance and string excitation and decay is followed by mean field interaction and rescattering between all hadrons, the newly produced as well as the originally ingoing hadrons. One key variable to reach extremely high baryon densities is the nuclear stopping power. The finding is that the initial rapidity gap at 10-15 AGeV of roughly 3 units is sufficiently small that two heavy nuclei are stopping each other in central collisions. Then a nearly equilibrated, long-lived ({approx}8 fm/c) central region of high baryon density (>5 {rho}{sub 0}) is produced. Signatures of this intermediate reaction stage which can be extracted from final observables are a strong strangeness enhancement and collective flow. A combined effort of experimental measurements, e.g. of the mass shift of the rho peak, and theoretical studies will allow to gain information on hadron dispersion relations in extremely dense baryon matter and eventually on the transition region from a hadronic resonance gas to quark matter.

OSTI ID:
243679
Report Number(s):
CONF-9304297-; ISSN 0003-0503; TRN: 96:002199-0186
Journal Information:
Bulletin of the American Physical Society, Vol. 38, Issue 2; Conference: 1993 joint meeting of the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers, Washington, DC (United States), 12-15 Apr 1993; Other Information: PBD: Apr 1993
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English