Relativistic hadron-hadron collisions in the ultra-relativistic quantum molecular dynamics model

Hadron-hadron (h-h) collisions at high energies are investigated in the ultra-relativistic quantum molecular dynamics (UrQMD) approach. This microscopic transport model describes the phenomenology of hadronic interactions at low and intermediate energies (sqrt(s))<5 GeV in terms of interactions between known hadrons and their resonances. At higher energies, (sqrt(s))>5 GeV, the excitation of colour strings and their subsequent fragmentation into hadrons dominates the multiple production of particles in the UrQMD model. The model shows a fair overall agreement with a large body of experimental h-h data over a wide range of h-h centre-of-mass energies. Hadronic reaction data with higher precision would be useful to support the use of the UrQMD model for relativistic heavy-ion collisions.