Particle production at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider within an evolutionary model

In this paper, the concepts of microscopic transport theory are introduced and the features and shortcomings of the most commonly used ansatzes are discussed. In particular, the Ultrarelativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) transport model is described in great detail. Based on the same principles as QMD and RQMD, it incorporates a vastly extended collision term with full baryon-antibaryon symmetry, 55 baryon and 32 meson species. Isospin is explicitly treated for all hadrons. The range of applicability stretches from $E_{lab} 200$ GeV/nucleon, allowing for a consistent calculation of excitation functions from the intermediate energy domain up to ultrarelativistic energies. The main physics topics under discussion are stopping, particle production and collective flow. Show more

Hadron-hadron collisions at high energies are investigated in the Ultra-relativistic-Quantum-Molecular-Dynamics approach (UrQMD). This microscopic transport model is designed to study pp, pA and A+A collisions. It describes the phenomenology of hadronic interactions at low and intermediate energies ($\sqrt s 5$ GeV, the excitation of color strings and their subsequent fragmentation into hadrons dominates the multiple production of particles in the UrQMD model. The model shows a fair overall agreement with a large body of experimental h-h data over a wide range of h-h center-of-mass energies. Hadronic reaction data with higher precision would be useful to support the use of the UrQMD model for relativistic heavy ion collisions. Show more

The present knowledge about hadrons produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions is compatible with chemical freeze-out happening when the energy density divided by the particle density reaches the value of 1 GeV. This observation is used to determine the energy dependence of the chemical freeze-out parameters T_{ch} and mu_B^{ch} for beam energies varying between 1 and 200 A.GeV. The consequences of this energy dependence are studied for various particle ratios. Predictions for particle ratios at beam energy 40 A.GeV are presented. The conditions for thermal freeze-out are also determined. These correspond either to an energy density of 45 MeV/fm**3 or to a particle density of 0.05/fm**3. Show more