Ultra-relativistic heavy ions and the CBA

Abstract

The study of ultra-relativistic heavy ions at an accelerator such as the CBA provides a unique glimpse of matter as it may have appeared in the early universe. This hot dense matter very probably appears as a quark-gluon plasma which expands and cools into hadronic matter. The CBA would provide data at the very highest energies, and produce matter at the highest energy densities. The possibility of using a cyclotron to inject very heavy ions into the AGS and then into the CBA would also allow the production of quark-gluon matter at higher energy densities than would light ions, and would make the matter in a larger volume where surface effects are minimized. At the highest energies with very heavy ions, there is great flexibility in the experimental signals which might be studied, as well as the nature of the matter which is produced. Some of the possibilities are discussed. (WHK)

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