Collective flow and QCD phase transition

Abstract

In the first part I discuss the sensitivity of collective matter expansion in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions to the transition between quark and hadronic matter (physics of the softest point of the Equation of State). A kink in the centrality dependence of elliptic flow has been suggested as a signature for the phase transition in hot QCD matter. Indeed, preliminary data of NA49 presented at this conference show first indications for the predicted kink. In the second part I have a look at the present theories of heavy-ion reactions. These remarks may also be seen as a critical comment to B. Mueller's summary talk (nucl-th/9906029) presented at this conference.

Write-up of QM '99 talk. Typo's corrected

References in corpus (4)

• Methods for analyzing anisotropic flow in relativistic nuclear collisions
• Highly Sensitive Centrality Dependence of Elliptic Flow -- A Novel Signature of the Phase Transition in QCD
• Evidence of early multi-strange hadron freeze-out in high energy nuclear collisions
• Elliptic Flow and HBT in non-central Nuclear Collisions

Cited by in corpus (6)

• The PHOBOS Perspective on Discoveries at RHIC
• Saturation of Elliptic Flow and the Transport Opacity of the Gluon Plasma at RHIC
• Elliptic flow at collider energies and cascade string models: The role of hard processes and multi-Pomeron exchanges
• Transverse momentum dependence of directed particle flow at 160 AGeV
• Elliptic Flow in Central Collisions of Deformed Nuclei
• Meson and baryon elliptic flow at high pT from parton coalescence