The Conference OC Bologna 2000: Structure of the Nucleus at the Dawn of the CenturyOCO was devoted to a discipline which has seen a strong revival of research activities in the last decade. New experimental results and theoretical developments in nuclear physics will certainly make important contributions to our knowledge and understanding of Nature's fundamental building blocks. The interest aroused by the Conference among the scientific community was clearly reflected in the large number of participants. These represented the most important nuclear physics laboratories in the world. The Conference covered five major topics of modern nuclear physics: nuclear structure, nucleusOConucleus collisions, hadron dynamics, nuclear astrophysics, and transdisciplinary and peaceful applications of nuclear science. It reviewed recent progress in the field and provided a forum for the discussion of current and future research projects. Contents: Quark and GluonOCoPlasma Phase Transition and Relativistic Heavy-Ion Reactions; LiquidOCoGas Phase Transitions in Nuclear Matter; Nuclear Caloric Curve and Thermodynamics of Heavy Ion Collisions; Statistical and Dynamics Aspects of Fragmentation; Intermediate Energy Heavy-Ion Reactions; Reaction Mechanisms around the Barrier. Fusion and Fission in Heavy-Ion Reactions. Readership: Nuclear physicists."

This volume contains the proceedings of the workshop entitled 'Particle Distributions in Hadronic and Nuclear Collisions', held on 11-13 June 1998 at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). This was the third in a series of annual meetings — organized by the High Energy Physics Groups in the Physics Department at UIC — devoted to topics in fundamental physics. It was a forum for the discussion of topics such as multiplicity distributions, quark-gluon plasma signatures, disoriented chiral condensates and other issues on the borderline between particle and heavy-ion physics. To that end, talks were given by speakers from both the heavy-ion and particle-physics communities.

The Conference “Bologna 2000: Structure of the Nucleus at the Dawn of the Century” was devoted to a discipline which has seen a strong revival of research activities in the last decade. New experimental results and theoretical developments in nuclear physics will certainly make important contributions to our knowledge and understanding of Nature's fundamental building blocks.The interest aroused by the Conference among the scientific community was clearly reflected in the large number of participants. These represented the most important nuclear physics laboratories in the world.The Conference covered five major topics of modern nuclear physics: nuclear structure, nucleus-nucleus collisions, hadron dynamics, nuclear astrophysics, and transdisciplinary and peaceful applications of nuclear science. It reviewed recent progress in the field and provided a forum for the discussion of current and future research projects.

This book attempts to cover the fascinating field of physics of relativistic heavy ions, mainly from the experimentalist's point of view. After the introductory chapter on quantum chromodynamics, basic properties of atomic nuclei, sources of relativistic nuclei, and typical detector set-ups are described in three subsequent chapters. Experimental facts on collisions of relativistic heavy ions are systematically presented in 15 consecutive chapters, starting from the simplest features like cross sections, multiplicities, and spectra of secondary particles and going to more involved characteristics like correlations, various relatively rare processes, and newly discovered features: collective flow, high pT suppression and jet quenching. Some entirely new topics are included, such as the difference between neutron and proton radii in nuclei, heavy hypernuclei, and electromagnetic effects on secondary particle spectra.Phenomenological approaches and related simple models are discussed in parallel with the presentation of experimental data. Near the end of the book, recent ideas about the new state of matter created in collisions of ultrarelativistic nuclei are discussed. In the final chapter, some predictions are given for nuclear collisions in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), now in construction at the site of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva. Finally, the appendix gives us basic notions of relativistic kinematics, and lists the main international conferences related to this field. A concise reference book on physics of relativistic heavy ions, it shows the present status of this field.

This book focuses on the state of the art of Monte Carlo methods in radiation physics and particle transport simulation and applications. Special attention is paid to algorithm development for modeling, and the analysis of experiments and measurements in a variety of fields.