Strange and non-strange baryon production in ultrarelativistic sulphur-tungsten and sulphur-sulphur collisions

摘要

Relativistic heavy ion collisions provide an opportunity to create a new phase of matter, the quark gluon plasma, in the laboratory. A possible quark gluon will be very short-lived, and only its decay products can be observed. There exists no unambiguous signal to identify plasma formation yet, although several candidates have been suggested. An enhanced production of strange particles is one of these proposed signals. The WA85 experiments measures strange particle production ratios in a narrow window in rapidity and transverse momentum. At present, WA85 is the only collaboration who have published results on multi strange particles. This thesis discusses the investigation of the production of strange particles in relativistic ion collisions done by the WA85 collaboration and its successors at CERN. An enhanced production of strange particles has been suggested as a signal for plasma production. Even if no plasma is produced, the experiment may reveal interesting information on the physics of the fireball produced by colliding heavy nuclei, the highest concentration of energy presently available on Earth. 80 refs., 57 figs., 11 tabs. (Atomindex citation 25:050613)