The SPS Heavy Ion Programme

Abstract

Statistical QCD predicts with increasing temperature a transition from hadronic matter to a plasma of deconfined quarks and gluons. The SPS Heavy Ion Programme was initiated to study this transition and the resulting quark-gluon plasma. After summarizing the different probes for the collision evolution, I survey the experimental results obtained so far and assess the conclusions that can be drawn.

Comments: 16 pages, 22 figures, 1 table; to appear in CERN 50th Anniversary issue of Physics Reports revised version: updated figures, small corrections