Chiral Symmetry in Nuclei -- Theoretical Expectations and Hard Facts

It is widely believed that chiral symmetry is restored not only at high temperatures, but also at high nuclear densities. The drop of the order parameter of the chiral phase transition, the chiral condensate, with density has indeed been calculated in various models and is as such a rather robust result. In this talk I point out that the connection of this property with actual observables is far less clear. For this task a good hadronic description of the primary production of hadrons, their propagation inside the nuclear medium, their decay and the propagation of the decay products through the medium to the detector all have to be treated with equal accuracy and weight. In this talk I illustrate with the examples of $\omega$ production and $\pi^0\pi^0$ production how important in particular final state interactions are.Comment: Invited Talk at Chiral07, Osaka, Japan, Nov. 13 - 16, 200

Development of a Time Projection Chamber Using Gas Electron Multipliers (GEM-TPC)

We developed a prototype time projection chamber using gas electron multipliers (GEM-TPC) for high energy heavy ion collision experiments. To investigate its performance, we conducted a beam test with 3 kinds of gases (Ar(90%)-CH4(10%), Ar(70%)-C2H6(30%) and CF4). Detection efficiency of 99%, and spatial resolution of 79 $\mu$m in the pad-row direction and 313 $\mu$m in the drift direction were achieved. The test results show that the GEM-TPC meets the requirements for high energy heavy ion collision experiments. The configuration and performance of the GEM-TPC are described.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures, published online in Nucl. Instr. and Meth.

Experimental Signature of Medium Modifications for rho and omega Mesons in the 12 GeV p + A Reactions

The invariant mass spectra of e+e- pairs produced in 12-GeV proton-induced nuclear reactions are measured at the KEK Proton-Synchrotron. On the low-mass side of the omega meson peak, a significant enhancement over the known hadronic sources has been observed. The mass spectra, including the excess, are well reproduced by a model that takes into account the density dependence of the vector meson mass modification, as theoretically predicted.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Version accepted for Physical Review Lette