Introduction to High-Energy Heavy-Ion Collisions

Abstract

The author has succeeded in writing a well-balanced textbook of the new field of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions (RHICs). The book is primarily suited to theoretically oriented graduate students and researchers (both theorists and experimental physicists). After introducing the necessary kinematical variables and describing the phenomenology of nucleon--nucleon collisions, the author proceeds to elucidate various concepts of high-energy particle physics which are relevant to the study of RHICs. Among these are the hard-scattering model, the Schwinger particle production mechanism, the classical string model and the dual parton model. He then focuses on the concept of the quark--gluon plasma (QGP) and gives an overview of the methods and results of lattice gauge theory. The final chapters of the book are devoted to the creation of a QGP via heavy-ion collisions and its possible signatures. In great detail the author discusses dilepton production, suppression, photon production, Hanbury--Brown--Twiss interferometry and strangeness enhancement. The book is very well written and I can recommend it to all graduate students and researchers interested in the field of RHICs. However, the book has one shortcoming: it focuses on heavy-ion physics in the energy region E > 200 GeV/nucleon and higher. The physics of the hadron gas, important for the later stages of RHICs at CERN and dominant for beam energies in the BEVALAC/SIS/AGS range, is neglected. To acquire an overview of the entire field of RHICs, the reader would profit from a supplementary reading of the more introductory textbook Introduction to Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions by L Csernai.