Target nucleus in relativistic nuclear collisions

Both the fireball model and hydrodynamical model predict, in a central collision, a fast energy dissipation in the early diving stage of the projectile into the target nucleus. In the final state both models show total incident energy largely dispersed over the whole target nucleus. In a quantitative comparison with the data for the Intranuclear Cascade Calculations, however, the 90/sup 0/ double differential cross section seems to be flatter than the calculated one. If the slope is reflecting the temperature in the system then the data are having apparently a higher temperature than the cascade would predict. This report suggests and discusses a picture of the reaction mechanism where the light projectile (e.g. Ne) gets stopped very early in the large target nucleus (e.g. Au or U) forming a small fireball at approximately half the beam rapidity, which decays inside the target nucleus, heating it up and causing thee whole system to expand. The expansion cools the system and big clusters can condense out if the total energy and thus entropy in the system is not too high to prevent it. Such a qualitative picture of a reaction mechanism emerges when we consider the information obtained about relativistic nuclear collisions from measurements of the remnants of a large target nucleus struck by a smaller projectile (Ne + Au) and relate it to the complementary information from earlier measurements of fast light reaction products. (WHK