Particle production in high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions

Recent data on the production of pions and strange particles at the Bevalac and Synchrophasotron accelerators are reviewed, covering pion spectra and multiplicity distributions, λ, K⁺ and K⁻ yields and spectra, and Λ polarization. Emphasis is placed on recent progress in determining the equation of state of compressed fireball nuclear matter from the observed pion yield in central collisions. Further, the information derived from apparent spectral temperatures is critically examined, along with a discussion of thermal and chemical equilibrium attainment in the reactions, as revealed by particle spectra and yields.     

Charm and bottom production at RHIC

The current status of charm and bottom production measurements at RHIC is summarized. Heavy-flavor data from p+p collisions at provide a crucial testing ground for perturbative QCD calculations and serve as a baseline for measurements in nucleus-nucleus collisions. Due to their large mass heavy quarks are produced in hard parton scattering processes in the earliest phase of a nucleus-nucleus collisions such that they can be used to probe the hot and dense medium that is formed in the course of Au+Au collisions at RHIC.     

Total cross section forZ 0 production in electron proton collisions

We present an exact calculation of the total cross section π_tot of theZ ⁰ production ine ^?1+p→e ^?+Z ⁰+X processes. We find a total cross section π_tot?1.0·10^?36cm² for an energy in the center of mass of 300 GeV and aZ ⁰ mass of 90GeV, which is quite a measurable result in somee ^?1 proton collider experiments, like HERA or SPS/LEP.     

Pion production in central high energy nuclear collisions

A model for pion production is studied in the context of a cascade calculation. The pions are produced through Δ-resonances which are allowed to decay. The emitted pions are assumed to interact with the other nucleons by forming new Δ -resonances. The time evolution of the pion and Δ-population is studied; it is found that Δs are always more numerous than pions during the sequence of baryon-baryon collisions. The spectrum of the pions is in considerably better agreement with experiment than the one obtained with frozen Δ-isobars. The presence of Δ-resonances appears to be important for the cooling of the pion system. The pion multiplicity is found to deviate from a Poisson distribution. The pion yield is overestimated by at least 25%; this result is discussed within the framework of conventional dynamics.     

Photon + hadron production in high energy deuteron (proton)–nucleus collisions

We apply the color glass condensate formalism to photon + hadron production cross section in high energy deuteron (proton)–gold collisions at RHIC. We investigate the dependence of the production cross section on the angle between the produced hadron and photon for various rapidities and transverse momenta. It is shown that the angular correlation between the produced hadron and photon is a sensitive probe of the saturation dynamics.     

Simple models for transverse energy production in high energy proton-nucleus collisions

A simple model which includes the effects of primary degradation is shown to be able to reproduce FERMILAB data for transverse energy production in pA collisions of 800 GeV protons on all targets from protons to ²⁰⁸Pb.     

Meson production and Bose-Einstein pion correlations in high energy collisions

The pion Bose-Einstein correlation parameters determined by OPAL show a weak dependence on pion multiplicity. We argue that the observed increase of the interaction radius, and the decrease of the chaoticity parameter could be due to an increasing fraction of other mesons at high multiplicities.     

Muon pair production in very high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions

Characteristics of muon pair production in very high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions are discussed. Particular attention is given to comparing the rate of muon pairs produced from thermalized quark-gluon matter to that of pairs produced via the usual Drell-Yan mechanism. The thermal rate is at least of the same order of magnitude as the direct Drell-Yan rate and will certainly dominate whenx _F for the pair approaches 1. Beyondx _F =1 the thermal rate is also substantial. This region is particularly easily accessible in fixed target experiments.     

Pion production mechanism in high energy heavy ion collisions

We study the mechanism of pion production in high energy heavy ion collisions with the nuclear cascade model developed in a previous paper. We describe time-dependently the reaction rates of the processes N+N→N+Δ, N+Δ→N+N, Δ→N+π, and N+π→Δ, to discuss the achievement of the chemical equilibrium. The importance of final Δ−N and π−N interactions is pointed out. The present cascade model reproduces well the observed pion yields in Ar+KCl high multiplicity events, without introducing the nuclear compression effect. The reason of the agreement is discussed by decomposing a variety of conditions employed in this model, and by reproducing the situations of Cugnon's cascade model and others.     

Subthreshold K production in high energy heavy ion collisions

We show that an important contribution to subthreshold K⁻ production in high energy heavy ion collision is the strangeness exchange reactions Yπ→K---N between the hyperons and pions initially produced in the collision. Estimates are given for the number of K⁻ produced via this mechanism and it accounts for a large fraction of the experimental observation.     

Thermal hadron production in high energy heavy ion collisions

We provide a method to test if hadrons produced in high energy heavy ion collisions were emitted at freeze-out from an equilibrium hadron gas. Our considerations are based on an ideal gas at fixed temperatureT _f , baryon number densityn _B , and vanishing total strangeness. The constituents of this gas are all hadron resonances up to a mass of 2 GeV; they are taken to decay according to the experimentally observed branching ratios. The ratios of the various resulting hadron production rates are tabulated as functions ofT _f andn _B . These tables can be used for the equilibration analysis of any heavy ion data; we illustrate this for some specific cases.     

Strangeness production in proton—proton and proton—nucleus collisions

We discuss the investigation of the strange meson production in proton-proton (pp) and proton-nucleus (pA) reactions within an effective Lagrangian model. The kaon production proceeds mainly via excitations ofN*(1650),N*(1710), andN* (1720) resonant intermediate nucleonic states, in the collision of two initial state nucleons. Therefore, the strangeness production is expected to provide information about the resonances lying at higher excitation energies. For beam energies very close to the kaon production threshold the hyperon-proton final state interaction effects are quite important. Thus, these studies provide a check on the models of hyperon-nucleon interactions. The inmedium production of kaons shows strong sensitivity to the self-energies of the intermediate mesons     

On the photon production in nucleus-nucleus collisions at high energy

A modified Landau hydrodynamical model is applied to study hard thermal photon production in central heavy-ion collisions at LHC, RHIC and SPS energies. It is shown that the phase transition from quark-gluon plasma into hadrons in consequence of the thermodynamical expansion is close to the second order phase transition if a resonance production is taken into account. Hard direct photon emission is also investigated with consideration of nuclear shadowing effect on structure function of quarks and gluons. Also π^π photon background is investigated. It is demonstrated that at the LHC energy photon yield from the quark-gluon plasma in the photon transversal momentumk _⊥ range from 5 to 25 GeV/c exceeds both the background and the direct photon yield. This conclusion may be important for the quark-gluon plasma diagnostic aims. It is also shown that for the LHC energy the thermal photon yield in the present model essentially exceeds this yield obtained in the Bjorken scaling model.     

A model for multiparticle production in high energy hadronic collisions

A model for multiparticle production process in high-energy hadronic collisions is proposed. In the centre of mass (CM) system of colliding particles the target and the projectile are assumed to pass through each other sharing energies allowed by kinematical constraints. Thus in app collision the energy associated with each is √S/2 (S being the square of the CM energy) which is taken to be the real variable that governs the number of particles produced. In the case of hadronnucleus collisions the projectile and the target ofv nucleons lying in a (Lorentz contracted) tube pass through each other sharing energies ⋍ √S _A2, whereS _A ⋍vS. Before the final state particles emerge from these systems, the constituents of the target, i.e.,v nucleons share equally (= √S _A2v) the total energy associated with the target and become the centres from which final state particles stem out. Several results have been discussed.