arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Jiri Dolejsi.
The ATLAS experiment took its first beam data in September 2008 and is actively preparing for the planned start of LHC collision data-taking in 2009. This preparation includes hardware and software commissioning, as well as calibration and cosmic data analysis. The status and performance of the ATLAS detector will be discussed, with a view towards the Pb+Pb run expected in 2010.
The enhancement of pions and kaons observed at small transverse momenta in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions may at least partly reflect critical scattering expected to occur in the neighborhood of a second order phase transition. Kinetic equations in the relaxation time approximation are proposed for the time evolution of the quark distribution function into that of the pions. Relaxation times for thermalization and hadronization processes are functions of momenta and approach zero in the limit p->0, a consequence of criticality at the phase transition. Data can be reproduced for suitably chosen parameters.