We report on a search for a phase transition from ordinary nuclear matter to a state of deconfined quarks and gluons as predicted by lattice QCD calculations. A new measurement of charmonium production in Pb-Pb interactions at 158 GeV/ c per nucleon agrees with our previous results and confirms the anomalous J/ ψ suppression we had already observed on a significantly smaller data sample. New event selection and analysis techniques show that, for peripheral collisions, the J/ ψ cross-section per nucleon-nucleon collision agrees with the precise suppression pattern inferred from a wide range of measurements extending from p-p up to S-U collisions. As the collisions become more central, the Pb-Pb cross-section exhibits a clear departure from this normal behaviour. The onset of the anomalous J/ ψ suppression reported here is the first clear observation of a threshold effect in heavy ion collisions and can be considered as a strong indication of the production of a deconfined quark-gluon phase in central Pb-Pb collisions.
The J/PSI cross section is the cross section for decay to muon pairs.
The J/PSI cross section is the cross section for decay to muon pairs. The ratios in this taBLE Are obtained from the minimum bias sample of events. See text if article for details.
The UA2 experiment, running at the CERN SPS\(\bar pp\) Collider, has performed a study of events containing three hard jets in the final state. The angular distributions of the three jets show evidence for gluon bremsstrahlung, in good agreement with a QCD model to leading order in the strong coupling constant αs. The yield of three-jet events relative to that of two-jet events provides a measure of the strong coupling constant: ;3K3/K2=0.23±0.01±0.04, whereK2 andK3 represent the contributions arising from higher order corrections in α3 to the two- and three-jet exclusive cross-sections. A detailed discussion of the systematic and theoretical uncertainties is given.
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