ABSTRACT
We investigate transverse hadron spectra from relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions within two independent transport approaches 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 above approximately 5A 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 approximately 5A 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.
ABSTRACT
We calculate the Gaussian radius parameters of the pion-emitting source in high-energy heavy-ion collisions, assuming a first-order phase transition from a thermalized quark-gluon plasma (QGP) to a gas of hadrons. Such a model leads to a very long-lived dissipative hadronic rescattering phase which dominates the properties of the two-pion correlation functions. The radii are found to depend only weakly on the thermalization time tau(i), the critical temperature Tc (and thus the latent heat), and the specific entropy of the QGP. The model calculations suggest a rapid increase of R(out)/R(side) as a function of KT if a thermalized QGP were formed.
