Study of relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions at the CERN SPS

In this experiment the physics at high energy densities will be explored. High energy densities are expected in collisions of 16O (provided from the GSI-LBL light ion source) with large target nuclei. One expectation is a phase transition into the quark gluon plasma. The experiment consists of a vertex detector, called the Plastic Ball, electromagnetic Pb-glass calorimeter, a EM-Hadron Calorimeter Wall, a multiplicity detector for charged particles and a zero degree calorimeter. The Plastic Ball consists of a 655 module, double dE/dx scintillator sphere covering THETAsub(Lab)>300, thus identifying protons, deuterons, tritons, alphas, etc., in the target rapidity domain. THETA<300 are covered by a streamer tube, pad readout array (25000 pads), and by 6 m2 Pb-Fe electromagnetic/hadronic fine granularity calorimeter following the Fabjan Willis tower design. A 1350-segment, GAMS type lead glass calorimeter of sufficiently small granularity to identify π0 and direct photons at Esub(perpendicular to)>1 GeV covers the 400-900 cm angles. This experiment can be triggered on projectile energy loss high Esub(t), high Msub(ch) or on high Esub(t) and large e-m energy in the lead glass. Overall, it determines the energy flux and Esub(t) distribution, the high psup(perpendicular to) π0 and γ distribution near mid-rapidity, and the target spectator decay pattern and entropy (from the relative yields of p, d, t...), as well as multiplicity distribution and multiplicity fluctuations. (orig.)