CERN Experiment NA49

Large Acceptance Hadron Detector for an Investigation of Pb-induced Reactions at the CERN SPS

This is the NA49 page for General Public, from the non-physicists to the heavy-ion insiders
It tries to provide first a summary and then directions to further information

NA49 Collaboration and Organisation

Spokeperson: P. Seyboth
Deputy Spokespersons: H. Bialkowska, and S. Wenig
CERN Contactperson: S. Wenig

NA49 is a large acceptance tracking spectrometer at the CERN SPS Lead beam facility. By indentifying charged hadrons and neutral strange particles it investigates hadronic signals of plasma formation and does hadron "thermometry". Thanks to its large acceptance this is possible down to the level of single events. The previous experiment in this series was NA35.

For more information see the following pages

...in few simple words

Heavy Ion physics and NA49 experiment

The main findings

...and in more details

The physics motivation and status of the CERN SPS heavy ion program

The scientific goal: creating a Quark-Gluon-Plasma state
Signals of QGP formation in Lead on Lead collisions
The Lead-beam experiments at CERN
The status of the CERN SPS heavy ion program

The NA49 physics results relevant to the question of QGP formation

The CERN SPS accelerator complex and The NA49 detector

...and more information

CERN page on the subject

For NA49 physicists

...and some images

Selected Images
with captions

NA49 Image Library