2023 Impact factor 4.2
Particles and Fields
Eur. Phys. J. C 5, 357-361
DOI 10.1007/s100529800853

Comment on entropy production in nuclear collisions

P. Brady - J. Dunn

University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA

Received: 11 November 1997 / Published online: 10 March 1998

Abstract
A recent analysis of the data for particle production in central nucleus-nucleus (AA) collisions finds an ``enhancement" in particle multiplicities or entropy at the highest energies near 200A GeV (as compared to those at lower energies). This is interpreted within a relativistic photon gas model as an increase in the number of degrees of freedom, and the formation of the quark-gluon plasma between AGS and SPS energies is hypothesized. We find that particle multiplicities in pA collisions also show an enhancement at large F, a nonlinear increase with the Fermi energy variable, F. This suggests the possibility that the enhancement seen in AA collisions is also due to such a non-linearity in F.


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