From SPS to RHIC: Maurice and the CERN heavy-ion programme
Abstract
Maurice Jacob played a key role in bringing together different groups from the experimental and theoretical nuclear and particle physics communities to initiate an ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collision program at the CERN SPS, in order to search for the quark-gluon plasma. I review the history of this program from its beginnings to the time when the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) started operation. I close by providing a glimpse of the important discoveries made at RHIC and giving an outlook towards heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). During Maurice's life and not least through his perpetually strong influence, relativistic heavy-ion physics has matured and led to discoveries that radiate into many other fields of physics. Heavy-ion physicists owe a great deal to Maurice Jacob.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0805.4572,
title = {From SPS to RHIC: Maurice and the CERN heavy-ion programme},
author = {Ulrich W. Heinz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0805.4572},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
12 pages, including 2 Figs. Invited talk given at the "Maurice Jacob Memorial Meeting", CERN, 11 September 2007. To appear in a special issue of Comments on Nuclear and Particle Physics which is published as a Section of Physica Scripta