Ultra-Relativistic Heavy Ion Nuclear Physics

This report describes an on-going research initiative for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR): investigating the physics of ultra-relativistic heavy ions, i.e. collisions between massive nuclei which have been accelerated to kinetic energies so large that the rest mass of the ions is a negligible fraction of their total mass-energy. This progress report is being submitted in conjunction with a 3-year grant-renewal proposal, containing additional materials. Three main categories drive the UALRGultra-relativistic heavy ion research. (1) investigations of multi-particle Hanbury-Brown-Twiss (HBT) correlations in the CERN and RHIC energy domains strongly influence the URHI experimental effort, (2) participation in the NA49 Experiment to study 33 TeV (160 GeV/nucleon) Pb on Pb collisions using the SPS facili& at CERN, and (3) participation in the STAR collaboration which is developing a major detector for use with the STAR Experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), being built at BNL