Timescales in heavy ion collisions
Abstract
The study of high energy collisions between heavy nuclei is a field unto itself, distinct from nuclear and particle physics. A defining aspect of heavy ion physics is the importance of a bulk, self-interacting system with a rich space-time substructure. I focus on the issue of timescales in heavy ion collisions, starting with proof from low-energy collisions that femtoscopy can, indeed, measure very long timescales. I then discuss the relativistic case, where detailed measurements over three orders of magnitude in energy reveal a timescale increase that might be due to a first-order phase transition. I discuss also consistency in evolution timescales as determined from traditional longitudinal sizes and a novel analysis using shape information.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1607.06188,
title = {Timescales in heavy ion collisions},
author = {Mike Lisa},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.06188},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
Written for Particle Production in Hadronic Collisions, a symposium in honor of the 80th birthday of Professor Andrzej Bialas. 21 pages; 14 figures