Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Due to mishaps, the following manuscript Chap. 31 did not appear in the proceedings of the QM2 meeting in Bielefeld, 10–14 May, 1982. It seems appropriate to show in this volume how things worked and what obstacles needed to be overcome in a new field of research that was recently born and rapidly advancing. The science policy decisions to be taken meant that 1–2 weeks were important, while a document could take as long as 4 weeks to travel between Geneva and Frankfurt.

It is argued that observation of the strange-particle abundance may lead to identification of the quark–gluon plasma and measurement of some of its properties. Approach to chemical equilibrium and competitive processes in the hadronic gas phase are discussed.

Two phases of hot hadronic matter are described with emphasis put on their distinction. Here the role of strange particles as a characteristic observable of the quark-gluon plasma phase is particularly explored.

The events presented in this book happened more than three decades ago. At that time we did not know how long it would take for the experimental program to come to be, and to make the discovery happen. Looking back, and looking at the present I can say that a vast majority of physicists studying relativistic heavy ion collisions agree today that the new quark-gluon plasma phase has been discovered and the discovery of more than a decade ago has been confirmed by the more recent results obtained at LHC. Given this circumstance, as a final word, I answer a few pertinent questions which I have heard often as related directly to the contents of this book—there are many other questions each answer generates.