CLASSICAL HADRODYNAMICS - A NEW APPROACH TO ULTRARELATIVISTIC HEAVY-ION COLLISIONS

We discuss a new approach to ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions ba sed on classical hadrodynamics for extended nucleons, corresponding to nucleons of finite size interacting with massive meson fields. This n ew theory provides a natural covariant microscopic approach that inclu des automatically spacetime nonlocality and retardation, nonequilibriu m phenomena, interactions among all nucleons; and particle production. In the current version of our theory, we consider N extended unexcite d nucleons interacting with massive neutral scalar (sigma) and neutral vector (omega) meson fields. The resulting classical relativistic man y-body equations of motion are solved numerically without further appr oximation for soft nucleon-nucleon collisions at P(lab) = 14.6, 30, 60 , 100 and 200 GeV/c to yield the transverse momentum imparted to the n ucleons. For the future development of the theory, the isovector pseud oscalar (pi(+), pi(-), pi(0)), isovector scalar (delta(+), delta(-), d elta(0)), isovector vector (rho(+), rho(-), rho(0)) and neutral pseudo scalar (eta) meson fields that are known to be important from nucleon- nucleon scattering experiments should be incorporated. In addition, th e effects of quantum uncertainty on the equations of motion should be included by use of techniques analogous to those used by Moniz and Sha rp for nonrelativistic quantum electrodynamics.