- #1
hkyriazi
- 175
- 2
The subject heading says it all. In heavy-ion high energy collisions that form a quark gluon plasma (QGP), is it known whether new nucleons are formed from the added energy, or are all of the QGP's quarks ones that existed previously in the colliding heavy ion nuclei? More specifically, are there more nucleons (and not just their component quarks) after the collision--and after the QGP cools--than before? I'd like to know if stable nucleons are formed de novo in such experiments. I'm not familiar with the experimental details.