Testing the Space-Time Structure of Event Generators

We report on work done in collaboration with Klaus Kinder-Geiger and John Ellis which aims at connecting the space-time structure of event generator simulations with observable output.Comment: 16 pages LaTeX, including 5 postscript figures. To appear in the Proceedings of ``RHIC Physics and Beyond - Kay Kay Gee Day'' (Brookhaven National Laboratory, 23 Oct 1998), ed. by B. Muller and R.D. Pisarski, AIP Conference Proceeding

Equation of State and Collective Dynamics

This talk summarizes the present status of a program to quantitatively relate data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on collective expansion flow to the Equation of State (EOS) of hot and dense strongly interacting matter, including the quark-gluon plasma and the quark-hadron phase transition. The limits reached with the present state of the art and the next steps required to make further progress will both be discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 6 two-part figures. Invited talk given at the 5th International Conference on the Physics and Astrophysics of Quark-Gluon Plasma (ICPAQGP 2005), Kolkata (India), Feb 8-12, 2005. Proceedings to be published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Jan-E Alam et al., eds.

Thermal hadron production in pp and p{\bar p} collisions

It is shown that the hadron production in high energy pp and p{\bar p} collisions, calculated by assuming that particles originate in hadron gas fireballs at thermal and partial chemical equilibrium, agrees very well with the data. The temperature of the hadron gas fireballs, determined by fitting hadron abundances, does not seem to depend on the centre of mass energy, having a nearly constant value of about 170 MeV. This value is in agreement with that obtained in e^+e^- collisions and supports a universal hadronization mechanism in all kinds of reactions consisting in a parton-hadron transition at critical values of temperature and pressure.Comment: 41 pages, 11 .eps figures, published in Z. Phys. C Revision - Corrections of two formulae in Sect.

Three-Point Spectral Density in QED and the Ward Identity at Finite Temperature

We derive the spectral representations of QED 3-point functions and then explicitly calculate the 3-point spectral densities in hard thermal loop approximation within the real time formalism. The Ward identities obeyed by the retarded and advanced 2- and 3-point functions are discussed. We compare our results with those for hot QCD .Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, some corrections in sec1, sec.

Relativistic Quantum Transport Theory for Electrodynamics

We investigate the relationship between the covariant and the three-dimensional (equal-time) formulations of quantum kinetic theory. We show that the three-dimensional approach can be obtained as the energy average of the covariant formulation. We illustrate this statement in scalar and spinor QED. For scalar QED we derive Lorentz covariant transport and constraint equations directly from the Klein-Gordon equation rather than through the previously used Feshbach-Villars representation. We then consider pair production in a spatially homogeneous but time-dependent electric field and show that the pair density is derived much more easily via the energy averaging method than in the equal-time representation. Proceeding to spinor QED, we derive the covariant version of the equal-time equation derived by Bialynicki-Birula et al. We show that it must be supplemented by another self-adjoint equation to obtain a complete description of the covariant spinor Wigner operator. After spinor decomposition and energy average we study the classical limit of the resulting three-dimensional kinetic equations. There are only two independent spinor components in this limit, the mass density and the spin density, and we derive also their covariant equations of motion. We then show that the equal-time kinetic equation provides a complete description only for constant external electromagnetic fields, but is in general incomplete. It must be supplemented by additional constraints which we derive explicitly from the covariant formulation.Comment: 32 pages, no figures, standard Late

Three-Point Functions at Finite Temperature

We study 3-point functions at finite temperature in the closed time path formalism. We give a general decomposition of the eight component tensor in terms of seven vertex functions. We derive a spectral representation for these seven functions in terms of two independent real spectral functions. We derive relationships between the seven functions and obtain a representation of the vertex tensor that greatly simplifies calculations in real time.Comment: 21 pages LaTeX; one ps-figure; Revised version, contains more references and discussio

What can we learn from three-pion interferometry ?

We address the question which additional information on the source shape and dynamics can be extracted from three-particle Bose-Einstein correlations. For chaotic sources the true three-particle correlation term is shown to be sensitive to the momentum dependence of the saddle point of the source and to its asymmetries around that point. For partially coherent sources the three-pion correlator allows to measure the degree of coherence without contamination from resonance decays. We derive the most general Gaussian parametrization of the two- and three-particle correlator for this case and discuss the space-time interpretation of the corresponding parameters.Comment: 16 pages, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Bose-Einstein Final State Symmetrization for Event Generators of Heavy Ion Collisions

We discuss algorithms which allow to calculate identical two-particle correlations from numerical simulations of relativistic heavy ion collisions. A toy model is used to illustrate their properties.Comment: Talk given at CRIS'98 (Catania, June 8-12, 1998), to appear in "CRIS'98: Measuring the size of things in the Universe: HBT interferometry and heavy ion physics", (S. Costa et al., eds.), World Scientific, Singapore, 1998. (10 pages Latex, 1 eps-figure, extended version of conference proceedings, Fig1 a,b added and corresponding discussion enlarged