Studies of relativistic heavy ion collisions. Final report, July 16, 1987--December 31, 1997

Abstract

As a member of the DLS collaboration, the Hopkins group participated in all aspects of the experiment and the analysis of the results. The recent work involved measurements of dielectrons from p-p, p-d collisions as well as heavy ion Ca-Ca collisions at high densities. These results show the expected effects of bremsstrahlung vector meson decay and Dalitz decay but still show that some varieties of the low mass cross-sections disagree with various theoretical estimates, which could indicate other effects of high nuclear density. The Hopkins group has also been an initial member of the STAR collaboration and helped initiate the proposal for jet searches in the heavy ion experiments at RHIC. The group was instrumental in initiating the first stage of an electro-magnetic calorimeter for these experiments. The group also joined (E896) the Ho experiment. This work was primarily devoted to finding the existence of an elementary system containing strange quarks. An initial experiment was done recently at which Hopkins provided various beam counters. The final work is expected to commence in the fall of `98. Finally, the group has contributed to a number of experiments involving polarization effects in nuclear collisions, searching for production of antimatter, and other aspects of relativistic collisions of heavy ions using the facilities at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).