Possible links between the liquid-gas and deconfinement-hadronization phase transitions

It is commonly accepted that strongly interacting matter has several phase transitions in different domains of temperature and baryon density. In this contribution I discuss two most popular phase transitions which in principle can be accessed in nuclear collisions. One of them, the liquid-gas phase transition, is well established theoretically and studied experimentally in nuclear multifragmentation reactions at intermediate energies. The other one, the deconfinement-hadronization phase transition, is at the focus of present and future experimental studies with relativistic heavy-ion beams at SPS, RHIC and LHC. Pssible links between these two phase transitions are identified from the viewpoint of their manifestation in violent nuclear collisions.Comment: 15 pages in revtex, 2 figures, to be published in the book "Dynamics and Thermodynamics with Nuclear Degrees of Freedom" by Springe

Studying Phase Transitions in Nuclear Collisions

In this talk I discuss three main topics concerning the theoretical description and observable signatures of possible phase transitions in nuclear collisions. The first one is related to the multifragmentation of thermalized sources and its connection to a liquid-gas phase transition in finite systems. The second one is dealing with the Coulomb excitation of ultrarelativistic heavy ions resulting in their deep disintegration. The third topic is devoted to the description of a first order phase transition in rapidly expanding matter. The resulting picture is that a strong collective flow of matter will lead to the fragmentation of a metastable phase into droplets. If the transition from quark-gluon plasma to hadron gas is of the first order it will manifest itself by strong nonstatistical fluctuations in observable hadron distributions.Comment: Invited talk presented at the International Conference "Physics with Storage Rings" (Bloomington, USA, 12-16 Sep. 1999), 16 pages in LaTeX including 4 eps figures, fig. 1 in colo

Collective mechanism of dilepton production in high-energy nuclear collisions

Collective bremsstrahlung of vector meson fields in relativistic nuclear collisions is studied within the time-dependent Walecka model. Mutual deceleration of the colliding nuclei is described by introducing the effective stopping time and average rapidity loss of baryons. It is shown that electromagnetic decays of virtual omega-mesons produced by bremsstrahlung mechanism can provide a substantial contribution to the soft dilepton yield at the SPS bombarding energies. In particular, it may be responsible for the dilepton enhancement observed in 160 AGev central Pb+Au collisions. Suggestions for future experiments to estimate the relative contribution of the collective mechanism are given.Comment: 6 page

Elliptic Flow and Dissipation in Heavy-Ion Collisions at E_{lab} = (1--160)A GeV

Elliptic flow in heavy-ion collisions at incident energies $E_{lab}\simeq$ (1--160)A GeV is analyzed within the model of 3-fluid dynamics (3FD). We show that a simple correction factor, taking into account dissipative affects, allows us to adjust the 3FD results to experimental data. This single-parameter fit results in a good reproduction of the elliptic flow as a function of the incident energy, centrality of the collision and rapidity. The experimental scaling of pion eccentricity-scaled elliptic flow versus charged-hadron-multiplicity density per unit transverse area turns out to be also reasonably described. Proceeding from values of the Knudsen number, deduced from this fit, we estimate the upper limit the shear viscosity-to-entropy ratio as $\eta/s \sim 1-2$ at the SPS incident energies. This value is of the order of minimal $\eta/s$ observed in water and liquid nitrogen.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, version accepted by Phys. Rev.

Hydrodynamic modeling of deconfinement phase transition in heavy-ion collisions at NICA-FAIR energies

We use (3+1) dimensional ideal hydrodynamics to describe the space-time evolution of strongly interacting matter created in Au+Au and Pb+Pb collisions. The model is applied for the domain of bombarding energies 1-160 AGeV which includes future NICA and FAIR experiments. Two equations of state are used: the first one corresponding to resonance hadron gas and the second one including the deconfinement phase transition. The initial state is represented by two Lorentz-boosted nuclei. Dynamical trajectories of matter in the central box of the system are analyzed. They can be well represented by a fast shock-wave compression followed by a relatively slow isentropic expansion. The parameters of collective flows and hadronic spectra are calculated under assumption of the isochronous freeze-out. It is shown that the deconfinement phase transition leads to broadening of proton rapidity distributions, increase of elliptic flows and formation of the directed antiflow in the central rapidity region. These effects are most pronounced at bombarding energies around 10 AGeV, when the system spends the longest time in the mixed phase. From the comparison with three-fluid calculations we conclude that the transparency effects are not so important in central collisions at NICA-FAIR energies (below 30 AGeV).Comment: 38 pages, 28 figure

Effects of collective expansion on light cluster spectra in relativistic heavy ion collisions

We discuss the interplay between collective flow and density profiles, describing light cluster production in heavy ion collisions at very high energies. Calculations are performed within the coalescence model. We show how collective flow can explain some qualitative features of the measured deuteron spectra, provided a proper parametrization of the spatial dependence of the single particle phase space distribution is chosen.Comment: 11 pages Latex, 2 figures, to be published in Phys. Lett.