NA49 experiment

The image shows a bunch of hadrons emerging from the collision by breaking apart the ions. One of such collisions will eventually lead to the production of quark-gluon plasma.

The NA49 experiment ("North Area experiment 49") was a particle physics experiment that investigated the properties of quark–gluon plasma. The experiment's synonym was Ions/TPC-Hadrons. It took place in the North Area of the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at CERN from 1991-2002.[1]

The experiment used a large-acceptance hadron detector (a time projection chamber) to investigate reactions induced by the collision of various heavy ions (such as those of lead) on targets made of a variety of elements. The purpose of NA49 was to study the production of charged hadrons and neutral strange particles to search for the prediction of the deconfinement transition by the lattice QCD.

Reinhard Stock (front) and Peter Seyboth (back), the NA49 spokespersons in front of the NA49 detector at CERN.

The NA49 experiment was the follow-up to the NA35 experiment, and was approved on 18 September 1991. The experiment began taking data in November 1994 and was completed on 19 October 2002. It was succeeded by the NA61 experiment (SHINE). The spokespersons for the experiment are Peter Seyboth and Reinhard Stock.

  1. ^ "Greybook". greybook.cern.ch. Retrieved 2023-08-24.