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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