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Join Gary on a journey as he explores phase transitions and nuclear collisions at MSU back in 1982, shedding light on collective motion and coalescence. Witness intricate experiments and collaborations in the world of particle physics through Gary's eyes.
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A Firestreak hits MSU: The early years Back to the future with Gary! Barbara Jacak February 9, 2011
Gary didn’t have a collider! • Collisions at 10-1000 MeV/nucleon to vaporize nuclei • The medium he wanted to study had vcm≠ 0 v = vBEAM Expect vT & T gradients! Firestreak model vTARGET= 0
Gary streaks over to MSU And there he finds…
Story telling • Gary is very practiced at this
Always take a friend especially one with all sorts of good stuff in his pockets
Doing an experiment has evolved • Driven by the science and required complexity to tackle those questions! • Now: a multi-year program • many topics and papers from each year’s running • Then: A week or two of taking data • one (or two) PRL + a PRC with complete results and details • + one or two Ph.D. theses
Wrote the first draft My first PRL
Finally everyone agreed! Ask the secretary to type up a clean copy. Send it off to The Physical Review Editor
Moving Source fits Collective motion: a common vLof the particle source
Precursor to the blast wave Collective motion: a common radial expansion of the particle source Borrowed from Olga Barannikova
Can produce nuclei as heavy asnitrogen via coalescence of protons and neutrons
We’re still coalescing things! cc coalesce at freezeout→ J/y Baryon enhancement explained by recombination of thermal quarks from an expanding quark gluon plasma. Greco, Ko, Levai: PRC 68 (2003)034904
More lessons • Gary teaches his students lots of things • One is audience “management” • recall talk from Anne Sickles (Westfall REU student) • on Monday • I learned • Never show slides that you don’t 100% understand the contents of • It’s important to keep the audience awake • They’re usually awake if they’re laughing