Heavy Ion Collisions At Intermediate Energy

Ions are atoms or molecules stripped of their electrons, so they can be accelerated by electric fields. They can be made to hit each other with low energy, intermediate energy, high energy, or very high energy; each energy range seeks to investigate different aspects of hadronic physics. Intermediate-energy heavy ion collisions explore the nuclei far from stability valley, the incompressibility of nuclear matter, the liquid-gas phase transition in nuclear environment, the symmetry energy far from the normal density, and other phenomena. This has been an active field of research for last four decades.This is a book for entrants in the field. It is suitable as a companion book in a graduate course. For practitioners in the field it will be useful as a reference.

"Ions are atoms or molecules stripped of their electrons, so they can be accelerated by electric fields. They can be made to hit each other with low energy, intermediate energy, high energy, or very high energy; each energy range seeks to investigate different aspects of hadronic physics. Intermediate-energy heavy ion collisions explore the nuclei far from stability valley, the incompressibility of nuclear matter, the liquid-gas phase transition in nuclear environment, the symmetry energy far from the normal density, and other phenomena. This has been an active field of research for last four decades. This is a book for entrants in the field. It is suitable as a companion book in a graduate course. For practitioners in the field it will be useful as a reference."--

This proceedings volume gives a consistent overview of various theoretical and experimental programs which study the dynamics of nucleus-nucleus collisions from low to ultra-relativistic energies. The contributions concentrate on the following topics: cold fragmentation of nuclear matter, pre-equilibrium and thermalization, thermal and chemical equilibration, fragmentation and correlations in intermediate energy collisions, dynamical properties of hot and dense nuclear matter in medium effects, resonance and strange nuclear matter, and signals of the deconfined state.High quality data obtained using experimental devices close to 4π geometries and recent theoretical developments are presented. They illustrate the significant progress made during the last few years in understanding the properties of nuclear matter in extreme conditions of pressure and temperature.This book serves as a graduate textbook and as a reference work on recent developments in this area.