Hadronization in Ultra-Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

86 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988.We consider the thermodynamical and hydrodynamical stability of proposed mechanisms for the dynamical hadronization transition in both ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions and the very early universe. We develop very general criteria for hydrodynamical stability and apply them to a number of proposed solutions. We find that the hadronization is accomplished by deflagration solutions in both scenarios. We argue that hadronization will occur before the quark-gluon plasma reaches a temperature that is low enough to admit detonations.We extend our analysis of hydrodynamic stability of hadronization solutions to include solutions which produce hadrons via a region of mixed phase. Nucleation of both mixed phase matter and hadronic matter is discussed using the criteria for hydrodynamic and thermodynamic stability. We calculate entropy production and velocity boosts for the transitions from quark matter to mixed phase matter and from mixed phase matter to hadronic matter. We find that the expected entropy increase during hadronization is about 6.1% in the central rapidity region of a heavy ion collision and about 4.2% in the early universe in the absence of supercooling. The expected velocity boost during hadronization is about $0.50c$ in heavy ion collisions and about $0.33c$ in the early universe, again assuming no supercooling.We propose the use of two-particle rapidity correlations as a signal for quark-gluon plasma formation. We study the correlations that arise from the formation of plasma droplets in high multiplicity ($10 < (dN/dy)\sb{ch} <$ 20-70) events. We show how the correlations between the final particles depends on the droplet size and density and on correlations between the droplets. We find that the two-particle correlation function $R\sb2$ could provide a clear signal for the formation of quark-gluon plasma. We find that this signal should be most easily seen in pp and light-ion collisions.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD