Bose-condensation through resonance decay

We show that a system described by an equation of state which contains a high number of degrees of freedom (resonances) can create a considerable amount of superfluid (condensed) pions through the decay of short-lived resonances, if baryon number and entropy are large and the dense matter decouples from chemical equilibrium earlier than from thermal equilibrium. The system cools down faster in the presence of a condensate, an effect that may partially compensate the enhancement of the lifetime expected in the case of quark-gluon-plasma formation.Comment: 12 pages GSI-93-27 PREPRIN

Flow effects on the freeze-out phase-space density in heavy ion collisions

The strong longitudinal expansion of the reaction zone formed in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is found to significantly reduce the spatially averaged pion phase-space density, compared to naive estimates based on thermal distributions. This has important implications for data interpretation and leads to larger values for the extracted pion chemical potential at kinetic freeze-out.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures included via epsfig, added discussion of different transverse density profiles, 1 new figur

The ``Out-Longitudinal'' Cross Term and Other Model Independent Features of the Two-Particle HBT Correlation Function

Using two specific models and a model independent formalism, we show that an ``out-longitudinal'' cross term should be included in any gaussian fits to correlation data. In addition, we show that correlation radii (including the cross term) measure lengths of homogeneity within the source, not necessarily geometric sizes.Comment: 4 pages, uuencoded compressed postscrip

Universal Pion Freeze-out Phase-Space Density

Results on the pion freeze-out phase-space density in sulphur-nucleus, Pb-Pb and pion-proton collisions at CERN-SPS are presented. All heavy-ion reactions are consistent with the thermal Bose-Einstein distrtibution f=1/(exp(E/T)-1) at T~120 MeV, modified for expansion. Pion-proton data are also consistent with f, but at T~180 MeV.Comment: 1 page, 1 figure; 98' report for GSI-Darmstad

Source Dimensions in Ultrarelativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

Recent experiments on pion correlations, interpreted as interferometric measurements of the collision zone, are compared with models that distinguish a prehadronic phase and a hadronic phase. The models include prehadronic longitudinal expansion, conversion to hadrons in local kinetic equilibrium, and rescattering of the produced hadrons. We find that the longitudinal and outward radii are surprisingly sensitive to the algorithm used for two-body collisions. The longitudinal radius measured in collisions of 200 GeV/u sulfur nuclei on a heavy target requires the existence of a prehadronic phase which converts to the hadronic phase at densities around 0.8-1.0 GeV/fm$^3$. The transverse radii cannot be reproduced without introducing more complex dynamics into the transverse expansion.Comment: RevTeX 3.0, 28 pages, 6 figures, not included, revised version, major change is an additional discussion of the classical two-body collision algorithm, a (compressed) postscript file of the complete paper including figures can be obtained from Authors or via anonymous ftp at ftp://ftp_int.phys.washington.edu/pub/herrmann/pisource.ps.

Extracting particle freeze-out phase-space densities and entropies from sources imaged in heavy-ion reactions

The space-averaged phase-space density and entropy per particle are both fundamental observables which can be extracted from the two-particle correlation functions measured in heavy-ion collisions. Two techniques have been proposed to extract the densities from correlation data: either by using the radius parameters from Gaussian fits to meson correlations or by using source imaging, which may be applied to any like pair correlation. We show that the imaging and Gaussian fits give the same result in the case of meson interferometry. We discuss the concept of an equivalent instantaneous source on which both techniques rely. We also discuss the phase-space occupancy and entropy per particle. Finally, we propose an improved formula for the phase-space occupancy that has a more controlled dependence on the uncertainty of the experimentally measured source functions.Comment: 14 pages, final version, to appear PRC. Fixed typos, added refs. for last section, added discussions of imaging and d/p ratio

Liquid-Drop Model and Quantum Resistance Against Noncompact Nuclear Geometries

The importance of quantum effects for exotic nuclear shapes is demonstrated. Based on the example of a sheet of nuclear matter of infinite lateral dimensions but finite thickness, it is shown that the quantization of states in momentum space, resulting from the confinement of the nucleonic motion in the conjugate geometrical space, generates a strong resistance against such a confinement and generates restoring forces driving the system towards compact geometries. In the liquid-drop model, these quantum effects are implicitly included in the surface energy term, via a choice of interaction parameters, an approximation that has been found valid for compact shapes, but has not yet been scrutinized for exotic shapes.Comment: 9 pages with 3 figure

Off-shell effects on particle production

We investigate the observable effects of off-shell propagation of nucleons in heavy-ion collisions at SIS energies. Within a semi-classical BUU transport model we find a strong enhancement of subthreshold particle production when off-shell nucleons are propagated.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Lifetime of the first and second collective excitations in metallic nanoparticles

We determine the lifetime of the surface plasmon in metallic nanoparticles under various conditions, concentrating on the Landau damping, which is the dominant mechanism for intermediate-size particles. Besides the main contribution to the lifetime, which smoothly increases with the size of the particle, our semiclassical evaluation yields an additional oscillating component. For the case of noble metal particles embedded in a dielectric medium, it is crucial to consider the details of the electronic confinement; we show that in this case the lifetime is determined by the shape of the self-consistent potential near the surface. Strong enough perturbations may lead to the second collective excitation of the electronic system. We study its lifetime, which is limited by two decay channels: Landau damping and ionization. We determine the size dependence of both contributions and show that the second collective excitation remains as a well defined resonance.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures; few minor change

Fluctuations of particle ratios and the abundance of hadronic resonances

In this letter we will argue that the event-by-event fluctuations of the ratio of positively over negatively charged pions provides a measurements of the number of rho and omega mesons right after hadronization. This finding can be utilized to put the hypothesis of chemical equilibration in relativistic heavy ion collisions to a test.Comment: 4 pages. No figure. Uses revtex with prl, aps, and multicol style