Statistical and dynamical aspects of heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

The success and limitation of current transport theories which assume local equilibrium throughout the collision is reviewed and new results on the equilibration of the neutron-to-proton ratio and on the shell effects in the kinetic energy loss are presented. Treating the strong coupling dynamically, a general transport theory is formulated which can account explicitly for the local equilibration process. Apart from ordinary friction a new dissipation mechanism arises which is the result of a combined effect from diabatic single-particle motion and dissipative two-body collisions. This dissipative diabatic dynamics (DDD) is discussed within simple models. An important feature is a considerable retardation of dissipation for realistic values of the mean free path of nucleons.

The complete text will be published in the Proceedings of the International Nuclear Physics Workshop, Trieste, Oct. 1981 (Nucl. Phys. A)