RELATIVISTIC HEAVY ION PHYSICS : RESULTS FROM AGS TO RHIC

High-energy collisions of heavy ions provide a means to study QCD in a regime of high parton density, and may provide insight into its phme structure. Results from the four experiments at RHIC (BRAHMS, PHENIX, PHOBOS and STAR) are presented, and placed in context with the lower energy data from the AGS and SPS accelerators. The focus is on the insights these measurements provide into the time history of the collision process. Taken together, the data point to the creation of a deconfined state of matter that forms quickly, expands rapidly and freezes out suddenly. With the new RHIC data, systematic data now exists for heavy ion collisions as a function of √s over several orders of magnitude and as a function of impact parameter. These data test the interplay between hard and soft processes in a large-volume system where nucleons are struck multiple times. The data is consistent with creating a deconfined state (jet quenching) that forms quickly (saturation models), expands rapidly (radial and elliptic flow) and freezes out suddenly (single freezeout and blast wave fits). There are also intriguing connections with particle production in elementary systems, which point to the role of the energy available for particle production on the features of the final state. Many in this field are optimistic that the careful understanding of this experimental data may lead t o the theoretical breakthroughs that will connect these complex systems to the fundamental lattice predict ions