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Abstract: The dynamics of partons, hadrons and strings in relativistic nucleus–nucleus collisions is analyzed within the novel Parton–Hadron–String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach, which is based on a Dynamical QuasiParticle Model (DQPM) for partons matched to reproduce recent lattice-QCD results – including the partonic equation of state – in thermodynamic equilibrium. Scalar- and vector-interaction densities are extracted from the DQPM as well as effective scalar- and vector-mean fields for the partons. The transition from partonic to hadronic degrees of freedom is described by covariant transition rates for the fusion of quark–antiquark pairs or three quarks (antiquarks), respectively, obeying flavor current-conservation, color neutrality as well as energy–momentum conservation. Since the dynamical quarks and antiquarks become very massive close to the phase transition, the formed resonant ‘pre-hadronic’ color-dipole states ( or qqq) are of high invariant mass, too, and sequentially decay to the groundstate meson and baryon octets increasing the total entropy. The PHSD approach is applied to nucleus–nucleus collisions from 20 to in order to explore the space–time regions of ‘partonic matter’. We find that even central collisions at the top-SPS energy of show a large fraction of non-partonic, i.e. hadronic or string-like matter, which can be viewed as a hadronic corona. This finding implies that neither hadronic nor only partonic ‘models’ can be employed to extract physical conclusions in comparing model results with data. On the other hand – studying in detail Pb+Pb reactions from 40 to – we observe that the partonic phase has a very low impact on rapidity distributions of hadrons but a sizeable influence on the transverse mass distribution of final kaons due to the repulsive partonic mean fields. Furthermore, we find a significant effect on the production of multi-strange antibaryons due to a slightly enhanced pair production in the partonic phase from massive time-like gluon decay and a larger formation of antibaryons in the hadronization process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The hadronization of an expanding partonic fireball is studied within the Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) approach which is based on a dynamical quasiparticle model (DQPM) matched to reproduce lattice QCD results in thermodynamic equilibrium. Apart from strong parton interactions the expansion and development of collective flow is found to be driven by strong gradients in the parton mean-fields. An analysis of the elliptic flow demonstrates a linear correlation with the spatial eccentricity as in the case of ideal hydrodynamics. The hadronization occurs by quark–antiquark fusion or 3 quark/3 antiquark recombination which is described by covariant transition rates. Since the dynamical quarks become very massive, the formed resonant ‘pre-hadronic’ color-dipole states ( or ) are of high invariant mass, too, and sequentially decay to the groundstate meson and baryon octets increasing the total entropy. This solves the entropy problem in hadronization in a natural way. Hadronic particle ratios turn out to be in line with those from a grand-canonical partition function at temperature MeV. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Dynamical quasiparticle properties are determined from lattice QCD along the line of the Peshier model for the running strong coupling constant in case of three light flavors. By separating time-like and space-like quantities in the number density and energy density the effective degrees of freedom in the gluon and quark sector may be specified from the time-like densities. The space-like parts of the energy densities are identified with interaction energy (or potential energy) densities. By using the time-like parton densities (or scalar densities) as independent degrees of freedom—instead of the temperature T and chemical potential as Lagrange parameters—variations of the potential energy densities with respect to the time-like gluon and/or fermion densities lead to effective mean-fields for time-like gluons and quarks as well as to effective gluon–gluon, quark–gluon and quark–quark (quark–antiquark) interactions. The latter dynamical quantities are found to be approximately independent on the quark chemical potential and thus well suited for an implementation in off-shell parton transport approaches. Results from the dynamical quasiparticle model (DQPM) in case of two dynamical light quark flavors are compared to lattice QCD calculations for the net quark density as well as for the ‘back-to-back’ differential dilepton production rate by annihilation. The DQPM is found to pass the independent tests. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Within a dynamical transport approach we investigate charged current interactions in neutrino–nucleus reactions for neutrino energies of 0.3–1.5 GeV with particular emphasis on resonant pion production channels via the resonance. The final-state-interactions of the resonance as well as of the emitted pions are calculated explicitly for 12C and 56Fe nuclei and show a dominance of pion suppression at momenta . A comparison to integrated spectra for reactions with the available (preliminary) data demonstrates a reasonable agreement. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Using the Quark-Gluon Strings Model --combined with Regge phenomenology-- we perform a comparative analysis of Λ, Σ0, Λ(1520) and Θ+ production in binary reactions induced by photon, pion and proton beams on the nucleon. We find that the existing experimental data on the γ p↦ K+Λ differential and total cross-sections can be described very well by the model for photon energies 1-16 GeV and - t < 2 GeV2 assuming a dominant contribution of the K* Regge trajectory. Moreover, using the same parameters we also reproduce the total γ p↦ K+Σ0 and γ p↦ K+Λ(1520) cross-sections suggesting a “universality” of the Regge model. In order to check the consistency of the approach we evaluate the differential and total cross-sections for the reaction π- p↦ K0Λ which is also found to be dominated by the K* Regge trajectory. Using the apparent “universality” of the Regge model we extend our scheme to the analysis of the binary reactions γ p↦¯0Θ+, π- p↦ K-Θ+ and pp↦Σ+Θ+ as well as the exclusive and inclusive Θ+ production in the reactions pp↦ p¯0Θ+ and pp↦Θ+ X. Our detailed studies demonstrate that Θ+ production does not follow the “universality” principle, thus suggesting an essentially different internal structure of the exotic baryon relative to conventional hyperons or hyperon resonances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production of K+-mesons in proton-nucleus collisions from 1.0 to 2.3 GeV is analyzed with respect to one-step nucleon-nucleon (NN?NYK+) and two-step ?-nucleon (?N?K+ YN) or pion-nucleon (pN?K+ Y) production channels on the basis of a coupled-channel (CBUU) transport approach including the kaon final-state-interactions (FSI). Momentum-dependent potentials for the nucleon, hyperon and kaon in the final state are included as well as K+ elastic rescattering in the target nucleus. The transport calculations are compared to the experimental K+ spectra taken at COSY-Jülich. Our systematic analysis of K+ spectra from12C,63Cu,107Ag and197Au targets as well as their momentum differential ratios gives a repulsive K+ potential of 20±5 MeV at normal nuclear matter density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Within a hadron-string dynamical transport approach (HSD) we investigate the attenuation of high transverse momentum () hadrons as well as the suppression of ‘near-side’ and ‘far-side’ jets in Au+Au collisions at invariant energies and in comparison to the data available from the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC). From our transport studies we find that a significant part of the high hadron attenuation seen experimentally can be attributed to inelastic interactions of ‘leading’ pre-hadrons with the dense hadronic environment. In addition, we also show results of ‘near-side’ and ‘far-side’ angular correlations of high particles from Au+Au collisions at and within this (pre-)hadronic attenuation scenario. It turns out that the ‘near-side’ correlations are unaltered—in accordance with experiment—whereas the ‘far-side’ correlations are suppressed by up to ∼ 60% in central collisions. Since a much larger suppression is observed experimentally for these reactions in central reactions we conclude that there should be strong additional (and earlier) partonic interactions in the dense and possibly colored medium created in Au+Au collisions at RHIC. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We solve the Kadanoff–Baym equations for nonequilibrium initial configurations of the -theory in dimensions and compare to explicit solutions of generalized transport equations for the same theory. The latter transport equations are derived from the Kadanoff–Baym equation in a first order gradient expansion in phase-space and explicitly retain the off-shell dynamics as inherent in the time-dependent spectral functions. The solutions of these equations compare very well with the exact solutions of the full Kadanoff–Baym equations with respect to the occupation numbers of the individual modes, the spectral evolution as well as the chemical equilibration process. Furthermore, the proper equilibrium off-shell distribution is reached for large times contrary to the quasiparticle Boltzmann limit. We additionally present a direct comparison of the solution of the generalized transport equations in the Kadanoff–Baym and Botermans–Malfliet form; both solutions are found to agree very well with each other. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We propose a nonperturbative resummation scheme for the four-point connected quark-antiquark Green’s functionG4 that shows how the Bethe-Salpeter equation may be “unquenched” with respect to quark-antiquark loops. This mechanism allows to dynamically account for hadronic meson decays and multiquark structures whilst respecting the underlying symmetries. An initial approximation to the four-point Schwinger-Dyson equation - suitable for phenomenological application - is examined numerically in a couple of aspects. It is demonstrated that this approximation explicitly maintains the correct asymptotic limits and contains the physical resonance structures in the near timelike region in the quark-antiquark channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of quark-gluon vertex dressing on the ground-state masses of theu/d-quark pseudoscalar, vector and axialvector mesons is considered with the Dyson-Schwinger equations. This extends the ladder-rainbow Bethe-Salpeter kernel to two-loops. To render the calculations feasible for this exploratory study, we employ a simple infrared dominant model for the gluon exchange that implements the vertex dressing. The resulting model, involving two distinct representations of the effective gluon exchange kernel, preserves both the axial-vector Ward-Takahashi identity and charge conjugation symmetry. Numerical results confirm that the pseudoscalar meson retains its Goldstone boson character. The vector meson mass, already at a very acceptable value at ladder level, receives only 30?MeV of attraction from this vertex dressing. For the axial-vector states, which are about 300?MeV too low in ladder approximation, the results are mixed: The 1+- state receives 290?MeV of repulsion, but the 1++ state is lowered further by 30?MeV. The exotic channels 0-- and 1-+ are found to have no states below 1.5?GeV in this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate hadron formation in deep inelastic lepton scattering on N, Kr and Xe nuclei in the kinematic regime of the HERMES experiment. The elementary electron–nucleon interaction is described within the event generator PYTHIA while a full coupled-channel treatment of the final state interactions is included by means of a BUU transport model. We find a good agreement with the measured charged hadron multiplicity ratio RMh for N and Kr targets by accounting for the deceleration and absorption of the primarily produced particles as well as for the creation of secondary hadrons in the final state interactions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We investigate hadron production and attenuation of hadrons with strange and charm quarks (or antiquarks) as well as high transverse momentum hadrons in relativistic nucleus–nucleus collisions from 2 A GeV to 21.3 A TeV within two independent transport approaches (UrQMD and HSD). Both transport models are based on quark, diquark, string and hadronic degrees of freedom, but do not include any explicit phase transition to a quark–gluon plasma. From our dynamical calculations we find that both models do not describe the maximum in the K+/π+ ratio at 20–30 A GeV in central Au+Au collisions found experimentally, though the excitation functions of strange mesons are reproduced well in HSD and UrQMD. Furthermore, the transport calculations show that the charmonium recreation by D+&Dmacr;→J/Ψ+meson reactions is comparable to the dissociation by ‘comoving’ mesons at RHIC energies contrary to SPS energies. This leads to the final result that the total J/Ψ suppression as a function of centrality at RHIC should be less than the suppression seen at SPS energies where the ‘comover’ dissociation is substantial and the backward channels play no role. Furthermore, our transport calculations—in comparison to experimental data on transverse momentum spectra from pp, d+Au and Au+Au reactions—show that pre-hadronic effects are responsible for both the hardening of the hadron spectra for low transverse momenta (Cronin effect) as well as the suppression of high pT hadrons. The mutual interactions of formed hadrons are found to be negligible in central Au+Au collisions at √ of s=200 GeV for pT≥6 GeV/c and the sizeable suppression seen experimentally is attributed to a large extent to the interactions of ‘leading’ pre-hadrons with the dense environment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Deuteron two-body photodisintegration is analysed within the framework of the Quark-Gluon Strings Model. It is found that the forward-backward angle asymmetry predicted by the model is confirmed by the recent data at different photon energies from JLab. New calculations for polarization observables, the cross-section asymmetry Σ and the polarization transfer Cz', for photon energies (1.2-6) GeV are presented and compared with the data available up to 2 GeV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production and propagation of antikaons—described by dynamical spectral functions Ah(X,P→,M2) as evaluated from a coupled channel G-matrix approach—is studied for nucleus–nucleus collisions at SIS energies in comparison to the conventional quasi-particle limit and the available experimental data using off-shell transport theory. We find that the K− spectra for 12C+12C and 58Ni+58Ni at 1.8 A GeV remain underestimated in the G-matrix approach as in the on-shell quasi-particle approximation whereas the preliminary spectra for Au+Au at 1.5 A GeV are well described in both limits. This also holds approximately for the K− rapidity distributions in semi-central collisions of Ni+Ni at 1.93 A GeV. However, in all limits considered there is no convincing description of all spectra simultaneously. Our off-shell transport calculations, furthermore, demonstrate that the strongest in-medium effects should be found for low antikaon momenta in the center-of-mass frame, since the deceleration of the antikaons in the attractive Coulomb and nuclear potentials and the propagation to the on-shell mass induces a net shift and squeezing of the K− spectra to the low momentum regime. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The production and decay of vector mesons (p, w) in pA and AA reactions is studied with particular emphasis on their in-medium spectral functions. It is explored within transport calculations if hadronic in-medium decays like Π+π- or π°γ might provide complementary information to their dilepton (e+e-) decays. Whereas the π+&pi,- signal from the p-meson is found to be strongly distorted by pion rescattering, the w-meson Dalitz decay to π°γ appears promising even for more heavy nuclei in 7A and pA reactions. Furthermore, the influence of nucleon and kaon/antikaon potentials on the K± yields and spectra in pA collisions is calculated and compared to the recent data from the ANKE Collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

: We study the perspectives of resonant charmonium production in p + A reactions within the Multiple Scattering Monte Carlo (MSMC) approach. We calculate the production of the resonances Ψ(2S) and Ψ(3770) on various nuclei, their propagation and decay to dileptons and D + D in the medium and vacuum, respectively, employing parametrizations for the D,D self-energies taken from QCD sum rule studies. The elastic and inelastic interactions of the charmonia and open-charm mesons in the medium are taken into account, too. It is found that the D,D invariant-mass spectra from light and heavy nuclei are not sufficiently sensitive to the in-medium properties of the Ψ(2S) and Ψ(3770). However, a “suppression” of low-mass dileptons from the Ψ(3770) might be seen experimentally as well as a small broadening of the Ψ(2S) dilepton spectra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lifetime of the Λ-hyperon in heavy hypernuclei measured in proton-Au, -Bi and -U collisions by the COSY-13 Collaboration at COSY-Jülich has been analyzed to yield τΛ = (145±11) ps. This value for τΛ is compatible with the lifetime extracted from antiproton annihilation on Bi and U targets, albeit much more accurate. Theoretical models based on the meson exchange picture and assuming the validity of the phenomenological Δ I = 1/2 rule predict the lifetime of heavy hypernuclei to be significantly larger (2-3 standard deviations). Such large differences indicate that at least one of the assumptions in these models is not fulfilled. A much better reproduction of the lifetimes of heavy hypernuclei is achieved in the phase space model, if the Δ I = 1/2 rule is discarded in the nonmesonic Λ decay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate hadron formation in high energy electroproduction off complex nuclei in the framework of a BUU transport model. Our approach combines a quantum mechanical treatment of the photon's initial state interactions with a semi-classical coupled channel simulation of the (pre)hadronic final-state interactions (FSI). This allows us to study the hadron attenuation observed at HERMES and to get information on the space-time picture of hadron formation separately for π±, π0, K±, p and $\bar{p}$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The predictions for the production of nuclides and particles in proton-induced reactions are important e.g. for the detailed design of spallation neutron sources or accelerator-driven-systems. Computational tools are required that are able to describe quantitatively the two-stage process i.e. intra-nuclear cascade followed by evaporation-fission. The first stage is a highly non-equilibrated process in which incoming proton deposits in hot residual nucleus both excitation energy and angular momentum. The CBUU transport model calculation for few targets, for the proton energy range 0.4-2.0 GeV are presented, with the idea to find global parametrizations for the distributions of charge, mass, excitation energy, angular momentum of hot residual nuclei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Quark-Gluon Strings Model (QGSM) combined with Regge phenomenology we consider the reactions π-→ K0Λ and π-p→ D Λ+c which are dominated by the contributions of the K* and D* Regge trajectories, respectively. The spin structure of the amplitudes is described by introducing Reggeized Born terms. It is found that the existing data for the reaction π-p →K 0;Λ are in reasonable agreement with the model predictions. To describe the absolute values of the cross-sections it is necessary to introduce also suppression factors which can be related to absorption corrections. Furthermore, assuming the SU(4) symmetry to hold for Regge residues and the universality of absorption corrections we calculate the cross-section of the reaction π-p→D-Λ+C. Employing the latter results from π-p reactions we then estimate the contributions of the pion exchange mechanism to the cross-sections of the reactions NN → NKA and NN → NDACand compare them with the contributions of the K and D exchanges. We find that the NN reactions are dominated not by pion exchange but by K and D exchanges, respectively. Moreover, assuming the SU(4) symmetry to hold approximately for the coupling constants gND&lambdac= gNKA we analyze also the production of leading Λc-hyperons in the reaction NN ↠ΛcX. It is shown that the non-perturbative mechanism should give an essential contribution to theΛc yield for x &Ge;0.5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Charmonium production and suppression in In+In and Pb+Pb reactions at SPS energies is investigated with the HSD transport approach within the ‘hadronic comover model’ as well as the ‘QGP threshold scenario’. The results of the transport calculations for suppression and the to ratio are compared with the recent data of the NA50 and NA60 Collaborations. We find that the comover absorption model—with a single parameter for the matrix element squared for charmonium-meson dissociation—performs best with respect to all data sets. The ‘threshold scenario’—within different assumptions for the melting energy densities—yields a reasonable suppression for but fails in reproducing the to ratio for Pb+Pb at . Predictions for Au+Au reactions are presented for a bombarding energy of in the different scenarios which will allow for a clear distinction between the models from the experimental side at the future FAIR facility. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

: We study the perspectives of resonant charmonium production in p + A reactions within the Multiple Scattering Monte Carlo (MSMC) approach. We calculate the production of the resonances Ψ(2S) and Ψ(3770) on various nuclei, their propagation and decay to dileptons and D + D in the medium and vacuum, respectively, employing parametrizations for the D,D self-energies taken from QCD sum rule studies. The elastic and inelastic interactions of the charmonia and open-charm mesons in the medium are taken into account, too. It is found that the D,D invariant-mass spectra from light and heavy nuclei are not sufficiently sensitive to the in-medium properties of the Ψ(2S) and Ψ(3770). However, a “suppression” of low-mass dileptons from the Ψ(3770) might be seen experimentally as well as a small broadening of the Ψ(2S) dilepton spectra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]