Composite particles and entropy production in relativistic nuclear collisions

One of the major goals in studying relativistic nuclear collisions is to study the behavior of nuclear matter at densities different from the ground state density. The production of composite particles is suggested to be a suitable observable to determine the size of the participant volume at freeze-out. There are also calculations showing that the observed ratio of deuterons to protons can be related to the produced entropy in the system. The yield ratio d/sub like//p/sub like/ as a function of participant baryon charge multiplicity (N/sub p/) for Ca + Ca and Nb + Nb at different bombarding energies is calculated