This new phase will take place at CERN, the international high- energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The EOS TPC was designed and built by a multidivisional LBL team of engineers, physicists, and technicians, headed by Al Arthur of the Engineering Division. The equation of state, or EOS, describes the changes that nuclear matter undergoes when subjected to the most extreme conditions of temperature and pressure, such as may exist in neutron stars, supernovas, and during the big bang. At the higher energies that will be available at CERN and RHIC, scientists believe that these changes should eventually culminate in a phase transition similar to what happens when water changes to steam. Studies of the nuclear equation of state began at the Bevalac in the 1970s with experiments involving beams of neon at energies of 2 billion electron volts per nucleon.
Collective flow is thought to be a sign of the compression of nuclear matter.
At the Bevalac, the studies concentrated on ever more detailed studies of collisions of the heaviest nuclei. The second approach is to increase the velocity of the accelerated particles, thus making the collisions that do occur more energetic. The final run of the sulfur beam at the SPS began on April 1 and has recently been completed. Now, the SPS injector at CERN will undergo major modifications to enable it to accelerate beams of lead, permitting, for the first time, experiments in which the energy is relativistic, and the nuclei in the beam are at the high end of the periodic table. In previous heavy-ion experiments at these energies, he explains, the researchers averaged out the characteristics of many collisions.