Study of prompt dimuon and charm production with proton and heavy ion beams at the CERN SPS

NA6

Transverse momentum distributions of J/ψ\psi, ψ′\psi^{\prime}, Drell-Yan and continuum dimuons produced in Pb-Pb interactions at the SPS

Muon pairs produced in Pb-Pb interactions at 158~GeV/$c$ per nucleon are used to study the transverse momentum distributions of the J/$\psi$, $\psi^{\prime}$ and dimuons in the mass continuum. In particular, the dependence of these distributions on the centrality of the Pb-Pb collision is investigated in detail

Results on open charm from NA50

NA5

Low mass dimuon production in proton and ion induced interactions at SPS

The low mass dimuon spectra collected in $p$-U collisions by the NA38 experiment significantly exceeds the total cross section expected from previous analysis, done by other experiments. The 'excess' events have a harder $p_{T}$ distribution than the muon pairs from $\eta$ and $\omega$ Dalitz decays, expected to dominate the mass window 0.4—0.65~GeV/$c^2$. We conjecture that the excess events might be due to $q\bar{q}$ annihilations, negligible at low $p_{T}$ but made visible by the $m_{T}$ cut applied in the NA38 data. Taking this assumption to parametrise the $p$-U spectra, we proceed with the analysis of the S-Cu, S-U and Pb-Pb data, collected by the NA38 and NA50 experiments, where we find that the measured mass spectra does not seem to exceed the expected low mass `cocktail' by more than 20%

Evidence for deconfinement of quarks and gluons from the J/psiJ/psi suppression pattern measured in Pb-Pb collisions at the CERN-SPS

NA50The analysis of the data collected by the NA50 experiment in 1998, reported in this paper, extends and clarifies the pattern of thepreviously observed \jpsi\ anomalous suppression. This newmeasurement, besides providing a deeper understanding of the previousobservations, reveals a steady significative decrease in the \jpsi\ production rate up to the most central Pb-Pb collisions. It clearlyrules out the presently available conventional (hadronic) models of\jpsi\ suppression, which unanimously predict a saturation of the\jpsi\ rate for central Pb-Pb collisions. On the contrary andtogether with the sharp onset of the anomalous suppression previouslyreported, the new observation leads to a global production ratepattern which finds its natural explanation in the framework of theformation of a deconfined state of quarks and gluons

Strangeness measurements in NA50 experiment with Pb projectiles

NA5

Observation of a threshold effect in the anomalous J/ψJ/\psi suppression

We report on a search for a phase transition from ordinary nuclear matter to a state of deconfined quarks and gluons as predicted by lattice QCD calculations. A new measurement of charmonium production in Pb-Pb interactions at 158 GeV/c per nucleon agrees with our previous results and confirms the anomalous $J/\psi$ suppression we had already observed on a significantly smaller data sample. New event selection and analysis techniques show that, for peripheral collisions, the $J/\psi$ cross-section per nucleon-nucleon collision agrees with the precise suppression pattern inferred from a wide range of measurements extending from $p-p$ up to S-U collisions. As the collisions become more central, the Pb-Pb cross-section exhibits a clear departure from this normal behaviour. The onset of the anomalous $J/\psi$ suppression reported here is the first clear observation of a threshold effect in heavy ion collisions and can be considered as a strong indication of the production of a deconfined quark-gluon phase in central Pb-Pb collisions

Charmonium production in Pb-Pb collisions

NA50The elaboration of specific media-planning is necessary to communicate with an opinion leader. Opinion leaders in 27 product categories are selected from a 10,000 sample of French representative consumers. Magazine is the favorite media of opinion leaders; the more important is the number of product categories in which a consumer is leaders, the greater the media consumption. Leaders do not systematically prefer the Internet, their preference appears to be category specific. However, a second study conducted among 600 brand website visitors shows that brand sites represent a major information source for the leaders