FUSION OF STRINGS VS. PERCOLATION AND THE TRANSITION TO THE QUARK-GLUON PLASMA

In most of the models of hadronic collisions the number of exchanged c olour strings grows with energy and atomic numbers of the projectile a nd target. At high string densities interaction between them becomes i mportant, which should melt them into the quark-gluon plasma state in the end. It is shown that under certain reasonable assumptions about t he the string interaction, a phase transition to the quark gluon plasm a indeed takes place in the system of many colour strings. It may be o f the first or second order, depending on the particular mechanism of the interaction.