Signatures of quark-gluon plasma formation in high energy heavy-ion collisions: a critical review

1998/10/31 by S. A. Bass, Steffen A. Bass, M. Gyulassy +5 · 8 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Heavy ion #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Interpretation (philosophy) #Ion #Nuclear physics #Observable #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Plasma #QCD matter #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum chromodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quark–gluon plasma #Theoretical physics #hep-ph #nucl-ex #nucl-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0954-3899/25/3/013

published as J.Phys.G25:R1-R57,1999 · Topical review, submitted to Journal of Physics G: 68 pages, including 39 figures (revised version: only minor modifications, some references added)

arxiv created 1998/12/03 · openalex publication_date 1999/01/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

A critical review on signatures of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) formation is given and the current (1998) experimental status is discussed. After giving an introduction to the properties of QCD matter in both, equilibrium and non-equilibrium theories, we focus on observables which may yield experimental evidence for QGP formation. For each individual observable the discussion is divided into three sections: first the connection between the respective observable and QGP formation in terms of the underlying theoretical concepts is given, then the relevant experimental results are reviewed and finally the current status concerning the interpretation of both, theory and experiment, is discussed. A comprehensive summary including an outlook towards RHIC is given in the final section.

Citations

• Hadron properties just before deconfinement
• Baryon junction stopping at the SPS and RHIC via HIJING/B
• Collective dynamics in highly relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• JψSuppression in Pb-Pb Collisions: A Hint of Quark-Gluon Plasma Production?
• Hydrodynamical assessment of 200AGeV collisions
• Properties of nonlocal charges in the supersymmetric two boson hierarchy
• Space-time structure of initial parton production in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions
• Observation of Anisotropic Event Shapes and Transverse Flow in Ultrarelativistic Au + Au Collisions
• Stopped Δ-matter source in heavy-ion collisions at 10 GeV/nucleon?
• Quarks, Gluons and Lattices
• Strangeness conservation in hot nuclear fireballs
• On the Convergence of Perturbative QCD at High Temperature
• Dilepton production at SPS energies
• Hot hadronic matter and strange anti-baryons
• Scaling of pseudocritical couplings in two-flavor QCD
• Thermal and hadrochemical equilibration in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the SPS
• Thermal equilibration and expansion in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the AGS
• On the impossibility of temperature extraction from heavy ion induced particle spectra
• Cosmic separation of phases
• Measurement of pion enhancement at low transverse momentum and of the Δ resonance abundance in Si-nucleus collisions at AGS energy
• 3d SU(N) + adjoint Higgs theory and finite-temperature QCD
• Microscopic models for ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions
• Strangeness in relativistic heavy ion collisions
• Pion and thermal photon spectra as a possible signal for a phase transition
• m⊥dependence of Bose-Einstein correlation radii
• A microscopic calculation of secondary Drell-Yan production in heavy ion collisions
• Collapsed Nuclei

Cited by

• (2+2)D Collective Model based on a relativistic Boltzmann equation in the Isotropization Time Approximation: CoMBolt-ITA
• Identified-particle production in Xe + Xe collisions at sNN=5.44 TeV using a multiphase transport model
• Predictions for azimuthal anisotropy in Xe+Xe collisions at sNN=5.44 TeV using a multiphase transport model
• Azimuthal anisotropy measurements of strange and multistrange hadrons in U+U collisions at sNN=193 GeV at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
• Non-linear flow modes of identified particles in Pb-Pb collisions at √s_NN = 5.02 TeV
• Microscopic coloured quark dynamics in the soft non-perturbative regime - description of hadron formation in relativistic S + Au collisions at CERN
• Baryon stopping and strange baryon and antibaryon production at ultrarelativistic energies
• Is the existence of a softest point in the directed flow excitation function an unambiguous signal for the creation of a quark–gluon plasma?