Inhomogeneous nucleation of quark-gluon plasma in high energy nuclear collisions

Abstract
We estimate the probability that a hard nucleon-nucleon collision is able to nucleate a seed of quark-gluon plasma in the surrounding hot and dense hadronic matter formed during a central collision of two large nuclei at AGS energies. The probability of producing at least one such seed is on the order of 1–100 %. We investigate the influence of quark-gluon plasma formation on the observed multiplicity distribution and find that it may lead to noticeable structure in the form of a bump or shoulder.
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