Collective deceleration of ultrarelativistic nuclei and creation of quark-gluon plasma

A unified space-time picture of baryon stopping and quark-gluon plasma creation in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions was proposed. Highly Lorentz contracted nuclei were assumed to be decelerated by the coherent color field which was formed between them after they passed through each other. This process continued until the field was neutralized by the Schwinger mechanism. Conservation of energy and momentum allowed the calculation of energy losses of nuclear slabs and the initial energy density of the quark-gluon plasma.