This award supports Professor George Fai of the Department of Physics, Kent State University, and Dr. Joergen Randrup of the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, in a research collaboration with Professors Laszlo P. Csernai and Jan S. Vaagen, of the Physics Department, University of Bergen, Norway. The general aim of their research is to achieve a theoretical understanding of relativistic nuclear collisions, with emphasis on the general properties of excited nuclear matter and possible phase transitions. They will carry out several closely related theoretical investigations of the collective properties of nuclear matter as they appear in relativistic heavy ion collisions. More specifically, they are seeking to improve realistic microcanonical simulation models of nuclear disassembly by including the attractive nuclear interactions and Coulomb interactions among the fragments. They will also study the dynamics of intermediate energy heavy ion collisions via classical simulation models, the properties of collective transverse flow and the dynamics of final fragmentation. In addition, they are interested in the dynamics of ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions and of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) formation. These and other types of models will be used to examine the properties of nuclear matter at two basic energy regions: the highest energies now under experimental investigation at CERN and Brookhaven National Laboratory, and intermediate energy reactions where nuclear multifragmentation and liquid-vapor phase transition can be studied. The U.S. investigators have developed one of the most detailed statistical fragmentation models at medium energies and will provide expertise in this area, while the Norwegian participants have worked in fluid dynamics at several energies and also bring expertise related to nucleus-nucleus interaction at low energy. Advances in the field of nuclear physics are made possible by the continuing interaction between theory and experiment. The theoretical results of this collaboration will provide useful tools for analyzing experimental data and designing new experiments. Since statistical methods are used extensively, the research can provide insight in the statistics of small systems, using nuclei as a proving ground.
