Thermalization at RHIC

Ideal hydroynamics provides an excellent description of all aspects of the single-particle spectra of all hadrons with transverse momenta below about 1.5-2 GeV/c at RHIC. This is shown to require rapid local thermalization at a time scale below 1 fm/c and at energy densities which exceed the critical value for color deconfinement by an order of magnitude. The only known thermalized state at such energy densities is the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). The rapid thermalization indicates that the QGP is a strongly interacting liquid rather than the weakly interacting gas of quarks and gluons that was previously expected.Comment: Erroneous formulation on p.2 corrected. 16 pages, incl. 4 postscript figures. Invited talk presented at HADRON-RANP 2004 (IX Hadron Physics and VII Relativistics Aspects of Nuclear Physics: A Joint Meeting on QCD and QGP), Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 28 - April 3, 2004. To appear in AIP Conference Proceedings (M. Bracco, M. Chiapparini, et al., eds.

From SPS to RHIC: Breaking the Barrier to the Quark-Gluon Plasma

After 15 years of heavy-ion collision experiments at the AGS and SPS, the recent turn-on of RHIC has initiated a new stage of quark-gluon plasma studies. I review the evidence for deconfined quark-gluon matter at SPS energies and the recent confirmation of some of the key ideas by the new RHIC data. Measurements of the elliptic flow at RHIC provide strong evidence for efficient thermalization during the very early partonic collision stage, resulting in a well-developed quark-gluon plasma with almost ideal fluid-dynamical collective behaviour and a lifetime of several fm/c.Comment: LaTex 12 pages, including 6 figures. Opening talk at the Conference "QCD@work", Martinafranca (Bari), June 16-20, 200

Latch mechanism

Rachet device transfers loads imposed on latch to support structure before latch springs resist loads, positively locks two pivoted structures on contact, and carries loads in all directions

Latching device

A latching device is suited for use in establishing a substantially motionless connection between a stationary receiver and a movable latching mechanism. The latching mechanism includes a pivotally supported restraining hook continuously urged into a capturing relationship with the receiver, characterized by a spring-biased pawl having a plurality of aligned teeth. The teeth are seated in the surface of the throat of the hook and positionable into restraining engagement with a rigid restraining shoulder projected from the receiver

[4 + 2] Cycloadditions of diphenylketene with a highly substituted 1,3-diene

Diphenylketene (2) undergoes [4 + 2] cycloadditions with the s-cis fixed diene (1) to give the dihydropyran (3) and the cyclohexenone (4)

Event-by-event hydrodynamics for heavy-ion collisions

We compare v2/{\epsilon}2 and v3/{\epsilon}3 from single-shot and event-by-event (2+1)-dimensional hydrodynamic calculations and discuss the validity of using single-shot calculations as substitutes for event-by-event calculations. Further we present a proof- of-concept calculation demonstrating that v2 and v3 together can be used to strongly reduce initial condition ambiguities.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures. Contribution to the proceedings for 19th Particles & Nuclei International Conference (PANIC11