High energy ion collisions. Final technical report, December 14, 1995--March 17, 1997

Abstract

This grant supported one year of work on Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions at the University of New Mexico. The Principal Investigator, an Adjunct Associate Professor at UNM, recruited a student (Mikhail Kopytine), sent him to CERN for several months to participate in the final data taking period of the NA44 experiment at CERN, then initiated analysis of the data collected during the run. A Hewlett-Packard workstation was purchased and Mr. Kopytine performed calibration, software development, and data analysis using it. A collaboration between Los Alamos National Laboratory and other faculty members at the University of New Mexico was begun, with the goal of working closely together on the PHENIX experiment for RHIC. At this time, a close collaboration continues, centered around the Muon tracking detectors for PHENIX. Station 1 of the tracking system is under construction at UNM, while stations 2 and 3 are the responsibility of LANL. The following accomplishments were made: (1) Participation in final data taking period of NA44; (2) Work on commissioning of aerogel Cerenkov trigger and performed offline analysis to demonstrate its performance; (3) Calibration of the uranium calorimeter in NA44 in preparation for Data Summary Tape production; (4) An optimized DST production for tapes with single pion, kaon, and proton triggers for Pb+Pb collisions was performed; (5) Analysis of pion and kaon distributions and production cross sections from Pb+Pb collisions; and (6) Participation in MVD development meetings and contributed to planning of the analysis software for MVD.