Transit Times in Lltra-Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

Abstract

Abstract Mean transit times in heavy-ion collisions are calculated as functions of the relativistic incident energy and the impact parameter. As a consequence of special relativity, they become constant in a central collision of O with Pb at T~0.15TeV. Together with a geometrical estimate of the maximum energy densities in the interaction region, it is argued that heavy ions in a large hadron collider may produce a quark-gluon plasma due to the plateau in the transit times at ultra-relativistic energies