Quark-Gluon Plasma Fireball

Abstract

Lattice-QCD results provide an opportunity to model, and extrapolate to finite baryon density, the properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Upon fixing the scale of the thermal coupling constant and vacuum energy to the lattice data, the properties of resulting QGP equations of state (EoS) are developed. We show that the physical properties of the dense matter fireball formed in heavy ion collision experiments at CERN-SPS are well described by the QGP-EoS we presented. We also estimate the properties of the fireball formed in early stages of nuclear collision, and argue that QGP formation must be expected down to 40A GeV in central Pb--Pb interactions.

Comments: 10 pages, 9 postscript figures, 1 table, uses revtex, V3: introduced difference between n_f and n_s; fireball restframe energy corrected, references added. Publisched version in press Phys. Rev. C