Hadron spectra from nuclear collisions

✍ Scribed by A. Leonidov; M. Nardi; H. Satz

• Book ID: 104336133
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 439 KB
• Volume: 610
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0375-9474
• DOI: 10.1016/s0375-9474(96)00348-x

✦ Synopsis

We describe high energy nuclear collisions by a superposition of isotropically decaying thermal sources ("fireballs '~) of freeze-out temperature T = 0.15 GeV. The longitudinal fireball superposition is taken as boost-invariant, in a rapidity range determined by the average energy loss of nucleons in p -p collisions. The transverse fireball motion is assumed to be due to random walk initial state collisions; it is determined by p -A data and then extrapolated to central A -B interactions. We thus obtain parameter-free predictions for the rapidity and transverse momentum spectra of hadrons produced in high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. The results account fully for the observed broadening of transverse momentum distributions, so that single-particle spectra require neither collective flow nor temperature increase.