Strings in Ultrarelativistic Collisions

Abstract

Classical relativistic strings provide a very successful concept, used in models for lepton-induced reactions (e ⁺ e ⁻ annihilation, deep inelastic lepton-nucleon and lepton-nucleus scattering) as well as for hadron or ion induced collisions (hadron-hadron, hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus scattering). The applicability is restricted to ultrarelativistic energies, i.e. the string energies should be in general considerably larger than the mass of the hadrons with the same flavour content as the strings (so for example a uu-d string, having the flavour content of a proton, should have a mass considerably larger than the proton mass).