Collisions of relativistic cosmic ray nuclei with emulsion

Thesis/Dissertation · Wed Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1986

OSTI ID:6230726

Atwater, T W

This thesis examines interactions of 1673 relativistic cosmic ray nuclei with nuclei of an emulsion detector, obtained during balloon flights over Texas and India. The projectile charge range of the data is /sub 6/C to /sub 26/Fe, and the kinetic energy range is 1.1 to over 100 GeV/amu. The major question examined is whether or not nucleus-nucleus (AA) interactions exhibit collective effects. The results serve as a guide to future machine experiments. The first measurement of the energy dependence of meson multiplicity in AA collisions in this energy range was made; the data was found to agree with two independent nucleon models. The multiplicity per interacting nucleon / shows no dependence on projectile charge; the cosmic ray data agree with low energy AA accelerator data, but fall some 25% below pp data at 5-100 GeV/amu. Some suggested signatures of the phase transition to a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) were examined. No evidence for the QGP was found after intense analysis of 22 high multiplicity central collision events. The major conclusion is that over all impact parameters in this energy range nucleus-nucleus collisions are indistinguishable from a superposition of nucleon-nucleon collisions.

• Research Organization: Minnesota Univ., Minneapolis (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6230726
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

651720* -- Nuclear Properties & Reactions
A=90-149
Experimental
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
BOSONS
COSMIC RADIATION
DATA
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
ENERGY DEPENDENCE
ENERGY RANGE
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
GEV RANGE
GEV RANGE 01-10
GEV RANGE 10-100
HADRONS
IMPACT PARAMETER
INFORMATION
INTERMEDIATE MASS NUCLEI
IONIZING RADIATIONS
LIGHT NUCLEI
MATTER
MESONS
MULTIPLICITY
NUCLEAR EMULSIONS
NUCLEAR MATTER
NUCLEAR REACTIONS
NUCLEI
NUMERICAL DATA
PARTICLE PRODUCTION
PHASE TRANSFORMATIONS
QUARK MATTER
RADIATIONS
SPALLATION