The influence of the dissipative terms on the conditions of formation and the
characteristic parameters of shock waves in relativistic nuclear collisions is
investigated for three types of equation of state (non linear QHD-1, resonance
gas and lattice QCD). Energy and velocity profiles are obtained in a
one-dimensional model; the duration of the shock phase and width of the shock
front are calculated. It is shown that the presence of a phase transition
results in a strong enhancement of the width of the shock front, which results
in an increase of transparency. This effect, combined with the fact that the
nuclei have a finite size, prevents the energy density to rise to its maximum
value (full stopping) as would be predicted by a non dissipative shock model.Comment: 30 pages, 18 figures, uuencoded compressed postscript file (with
figures already embedded), submitted to Nucl. Phys.
