PROBING THE EXTREMES OF HIGH BAYRON DENSITY NUCLEAR-MATTER - THE BNL AGS PROGRAM

The Brookhaven National Laboratory Tandem-AGS accelerator facility has been used since 1986 to generate beams of O-16 and Si-28 at momenta o f 14.6 A . GeV/c and recently (197)AU at momenta of up to 11.6 A . GeV /c. In collisions with nuclear targets, these relativistic heavy ion b eams are believed to produce nuclear matter at close to the highest ba ryon densities achievable in the laboratory. The status of the experim ental program and theoretical understanding of these interactions will be summarized. Although no unambiguous evidence for new physics (such as the formation of a quark gluon plasma) has been found, a number of interesting features have arisen. In particular, it is clear that the dynamic evolution of these systems is dominated by the creation, inte ractions, and decays of high-mass excited baryons.