Detectors for high energy nuclear physics experiments

High energy nuclear physics experiments started about a decade ago with the aim of studying quark gluon plasmas (QGP) in the laboratory. Statistical QCD predicts that in nuclear collisions at ultra-relativistic energies the quarks and gluons in hadrons will be momentarily deconfined into a phase of matter containing free quarks and gluons in the form of a plasma. This quark gluon plasma is also thought to have existed in the very early history of the evolution of the Universe, some 10 microseconds after the Big Bang when the extremely hot blob of energy started to cool and be converted into matter. Thus the study of ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions is important from the point of view of nuclear and high energy physics, astrophysics and cosmology. In these studies new detectors are required. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.