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 represents the proceedings of a symposium held during the centennial meeting of the American Physical Society. It covers the latest results in experimental heavy ion physics from the Alternating Gradient Accelerator in the US and the SpS at CERN, and summarizes the current theoretical and experimental state of the field before the commissioning of RHIC. Among the highlights are the theoretical predictions made for what the experimentalists will see in the high temperature matter expected to be formed at the new machine.

The volume of these proceedings is devoted to a wide variety of items, both in theory and experiment, of particle physics such as electroweak theory, fundamental symmetries, tests of standard model and beyond, neutrino and astroparticle physics, hadron physics, gravitation and cosmology, physics at the present and future accelerators.

"This book is devoted to phenomena that are of interest to both particle and nuclear physicists. The topics include nucleon structure (including spin structure), electron, neutrino, and hadron scattering from nucleons and nuclei, strange matter, the standard model, theory of nucleons and nuclei from both the QCD and nucleon-meson viewpoints, new experimental techniques, and new facilities."--Publisher's website.

Papers of the June 1989 meeting in Beijing by the China Center of Advanced Science and Technology. This small book covers nucleus- nucleus collisions, states of the vacuum, and highly relativistic heavy ions in the experimental realm. Theoretical papers deal with quark-gluon plasma, and relativistic heavy ion collisions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR