Current Status of Quark Gluon Plasma Signals
Abstract
Compelling evidence for a new form of matter has been claimed to be formed in Pb+Pb collisions at SPS. We discuss the uniqueness of often proposed experimental signatures for quark matter formation in relativistic heavy ion collisions. It is demonstrated that so far none of the proposed signals like J/Ψ meson production/suppression, strangeness enhancement, dileptons, and directed flow unambigiously show that a phase of deconfined matter has been formed in SPS Pb+Pb collisions. We emphasize the need for systematic future measurements to search for simultaneous irregularities in the excitation functions of several observables in order to come close to pinning the properties of hot, dense QCD matter from data.
- Publication:
-
Relativistic Aspects of Nuclear Physics
- Pub Date:
- September 2001
- DOI:
- 10.1142/9789812799814_0020
- Bibcode:
- 2001ranp.conf..271S