Extensive systematizations of theoretical and experimental nuclear densities and of optical potential strengths extracted from heavy-ion elastic scattering data analyses at low and intermediate energies are presented. The energy-dependence of the nuclear potential is accounted for within a model based on the nonlocal nature of the interaction. The systematics indicates that the heavy-ion nuclea...

The study of correlations and fluctuations can provide evidence for the production of the quarkgluon plasma (QGP) in relativistic heavy ion collisions. Various theories predict that the production of a QGP phase in relativistic heavy ion collisions could produce significant event-by-event correlations and fluctuations in, transverse momentum, multiplicity, etc. Some of the recent results using ...

Recent high precision experimental data for heavy-ion fusion cross sections at energies in the vicinity of the Coulomb barrier systematically show that a strikingly large surface diffuseness parameter for a Woods-Saxon potential is required in order to fit the data. We discuss possible origins for this anomaly, including the effects of dissipation and the sensitivity of fusion cross sections to...

After decades of painstaking research, the field of heavy ion physics has reached an exciting new era. Evidence is mounting that we can create a high temperature, high density, strongly interacting “bulk matter” state in the laboratory — perhaps even a quark-gluon plasma. This strongly interacting matter is likely to provide qualitative new information about the fundamental strong interaction, ...

The PHENIX Experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has made measurements of event-by-event fluctuations in the charged particle multiplicity as a function of collision energy, centrality, collision species, and transverse momentum in several heavy ion collision systems. It is observed that the fluctuations in terms of σ/μ exhibit a universal power-law scaling as a function of Npartici...

In ultraperipheral relativistic deuteron on heavy-ion collisions, a photon emitted from the heavy nucleus may dissociate the deuterium ion. We find deuterium breakup cross sections of 1.38 barns for deuterium-gold collisions at a center of mass energy of 200 GeV per nucleon, as studied at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, and 2.49 barns for deuterium-lead collisions at a center of mass energ...