Using Computer Simulations To Study Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions PDF Download

Results for (Lambda) production by gold beams on gold targets were analyzed and published. The author completed the analysis of the Si-Si and Si-Lead data from previous runs. The results have been published in a series of papers. Major components of the STAR detector for RHIC have been built and have arrived at BNL. The detector continues to evolve and work continues on developing programs for the detector and simulating events and physics results that will be seen by it. The move is underway from design to physical construction to test and commissioning and some of the detector is taking shape. Much of the effort in the past year has gone into refining the detector design, looking at possible triggers, and developing a software system for simulating and eventually analyzing events. Building, commissioning, and operating this detector (including the software) will be a major effort over the coming years. The author studied the E810 Si-Pb full field data for positive-negative track correlations. He estimated the number of excited nucleons (N*'s) and Deltas in their region of measurement. From the relative population of ground state nucleons (pn, n) and excited nucleons he determined the freeze-out temperature of the hot system created in a high energy, heavy ion collision. Prof. Kramer was involved in the overall program for E881 and primarily in the software development for STAR while Mr. Efstathiadis had concentrated on understanding the data, i.e. primarily developing Monte Carlo programs to gain insight into the mechanisms important in the collisions and corrections needed in the analysis. The latest versions of GEANT were used to simulate the E891 apparatus and special programs were developed to be able to easily input STAR detector geometries into GEANT.