PHOBOS is one of four experiments studying Au-Au collisions at RHIC. During the first running period RHIC provided Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$ = 56 GeV and 130 GeV. The data collected during this period allowed us to study the energy and centrality dependence of particle production, the anisotropy of the final state azimuthal distribution and particle ratios at mid-rapidity.
PHOBOS is one of four experiments studying the Au-Au interactions at RHIC. The data collected during the first few weeks after the RHIC start-up, using the initial configuration of the PHOBOS detector, were sufficient to obtain the first physics results for the most central collisions of Au nuclei at the center of mass energy of 56 and 130 AGeV. The pseudorapidity density of charged particles near midrapidity is shown and compared with data at lower energies and from $pp$ and $pbar{p}$ collisions. The progress of the analysis of the data is also presented.PHOBOS is one of four experiments studying the Au-Au interactions at RHIC. The data collected during the first few weeks after the RHIC start-up, using the initial configuration of the PHOBOS detector, were sufficient to obtain the first physics results for the most central collisions of Au nuclei at the center of mass energy of 56 and 130 AGeV. The pseudorapidity density of charged particles near midrapidity is shown and compared with data at lower energies and from $pp$ and $pbar{p}$ collisions. The progress of the analysis of the data is also presented.
The PHOBOS experiment is well positioned to obtain crucial information about relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC, combining a multiplicity counter with a multi-particle spectrometer. The multiplicity arrays will measure the charged particle multiplicity over the full solid angle. The spectrometer will be able to identify particles at mid-rapidity. The experiment is constructed almost exclusively of silicon pad detectors. Detectors of nine different types are configured in the multiplicity and vertex detector (22,000 channels) and two multi-particle spectrometers (120,000 channels). The overall layout of the experiment, testing of the silicon sensors and the performance of the detectors during the engineering run at RHIC in 1999 are discussed.
The PHOBOS experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory is studying interactions of heavy nuclei at the largest energies available in the laboratory. The high multiplicity of particles created in heavy ion collisions makes precise vertex reconstruction possible using information from a spectrometer and a specialized vertex detector with relatively small acceptances. For lower multiplicity events, a large acceptance, single layer multiplicity detector is used and special algorithms are developed to reconstruct the vertex, resulting in high efficiency at the expense of poorer resolution. The algorithms used in the PHOBOS experiment and their performance are presented.
The first results from Au-Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{NN}}$=130 GeV obtained with the PHENIX detector in the Year 2000 run at RHIC are presented. The mid-rapidity charged particle multiplicity and transverse energy per participating nucleon rise steadily with the number of participants, such that transverse energy per charged particle remains relatively constant as a function of centrality. Identified charged hadron spectra as well as $bar{p}/p$ and $K^+/K^-$ ratios are discussed. Charged particle and neutral pion transverse momentum distributions in peripheral nuclear collisions are consistent with point-like scaling. The spectra at high $p_t$ from central collisions are significantly suppressed when compared to a simple superposition of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions.
Since 1986, several heavy ion experiments have studied some signatures of the formation of the quark-gluon plasma and a few exciting results have been found. However, some important questions are still unanswered and require new measurements. The NA60 experiment, with a new detector concept that vastly improves dimuon detection in proton-nucleus and heavy-ion collisions, studies several of those open questions, including the production of open charm. This paper presents the experiment and some first results from data collected in 2002.