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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]

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]

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]