Understanding of protons and neutrons, or "nucleons"â€"the building blocks of atomic nucleiâ€"has advanced dramatically, both theoretically and experimentally, in the past half century. A central goal of modern nuclear physics is to understand the structure of the proton and neutron directly from the dynamics of their quarks and gluons governed by the theory of their interactions, quantum chromodynamics (QCD), and how nuclear interactions between protons and neutrons emerge from these dynamics. With deeper understanding of the quark-gluon structure of matter, scientists are poised to reach a deeper picture of these building blocks, and atomic nuclei themselves, as collective many-body systems with new emergent behavior. The development of a U.S. domestic electron-ion collider (EIC) facility has the potential to answer questions that are central to completing an understanding of atoms and integral to the agenda of nuclear physics today. This study assesses the merits and significance of the science that could be addressed by an EIC, and its importance to nuclear physics in particular and to the physical sciences in general. It evaluates the significance of the science that would be enabled by the construction of an EIC, its benefits to U.S. leadership in nuclear physics, and the benefits to other fields of science of a U.S.-based EIC.

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.

The 1997 International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics was held at the campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Jerusalem Renaissance Hotel, from August 19th to August 25th, 1997. This was the first time that the European Physical Society had its High Energy Physics Conference outside the boundary of Europe. A total of 550 physicists participated in the conference with a total of 250 presentations in the parallel sessions and 26 presentations in the plenary sessions. The Board of the of the High Energy and Particle Physics division (HEPP) of the EPS acted as the Scientific Organizing Committee. The Board acknowl edges the help of the International Advisory Committee as well as that of the Local Organizing Committee. The conference was co-organized by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and by the Weizmann Institute of Science, with important help by physi cists from the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion) and the Tel Aviv University.

This is a collection of exciting papers in the area of high energy nuclear collisions and quark gluon plasma. The volume covers lectures on the natures of hadronic matter at high temperature and/or density and signals of quark-hadron phase transitions. It also includes discussions and descriptions of the data of CERN and BNL nucleus-nucleus collisions. Other contributions deal with physics at RHIC, LHC and the PS-collider, collision simulators and various related topics.