Evidence for a Blast Wave from Compressed Nuclear Matter

Central collisions of heavy nuclei at c.m. kinetic energies of a few hundred MeV per nucleon produce fireballs of hot, dense nuclear matter. Each fireball explodes, producing a blast wave of nucleons and pions. Several features of the observed cross sections for pions and protons from Ne on Na F at 0.8 GeV/nucleon (lab) are explained by the blast wave, but contradict earlier, purely thermal models. The available energy is equally divided between translational energy of the blast, and thermal motion of the particles in the exploding matter.

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