Transverse baryon flow as possible evidence for a quark-gluon-plasma phase

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Abstract
In order to investigate the coupling between collective flow of nucleons and pions in hot pion-dominated hadronic matter, we calculate the pion-nucleon drag coefficient in linearized transport theory. We find that the characteristic time for flow equalization is longer than the time scale of the expansion of a hardonic fireball created in high-energy collisions. The analysis of transverse-momentum data from p+p¯ collisions at √s =1.8 TeV reveals the same flow velocity for mesons and antinucleons. We argue that this may be evidence for the formation of a quark-gluon plasma in these collisions.