Ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions in a dynamical model of independent quark-gluon strings

A dynamical model of independent quark-gluon strings for collisions of heavy ions at ultrarelativistic energies is formulated. The processes of string formation and fragmentation are described in terms of the dual parton model. The discussion of the nuclear interaction is based on a Monte Carlo solution of a coupled system of Boltzmann-type relativistic kinetic equations allowing for a finite time of hadron formation. The evolution of the energy densities and of baryonic charge is discussed for central O + Au collisions. In order to isolate the contributions from different nuclear effects, the calculated characteristics for both the central and the fragmentation regions of rapidities are compared with experimental data recently obtained at CERN