Hadronic Transport Model with a Phase Transition

Abstract

We specify a tractable transport model with thermodynamic properties close to those expected for the strongly interacting matter. In particular, at high temperatures, the matter undergoes a phase transition, such as to the quark-gluon plasma, with a drop in masses of elementary excitations and a rapid increase in the number of degrees of freedom. We show that a softening of the equation of state such as associated with the transition to quark-gluon plasma should be observable in the elliptic-flow excitation function from heavy-ion reactions.