We discuss the interplay between collective flow and density profiles, describing light cluster production in heavy ion collisions at very high energies.Calculations are performed within the coalescence model. We show how collective flow can explain some qualitative features of the measured deuteron spectra, provided a proper parametrization of the spatial dependence of the single particle phase space distribution is chosen.PACS number(s): 25.75 -q, 25.75 -Ld

We suggest the variation of charmonium production rate with Feynman x(F) in heavy ion collisions as a novel and sensitive probe for the properties of the created matter. Final state interactions with the comoving matter create a minimum at x(F) = 0, which is especially deep and narrow if a quark-gluon plasma is formed. While a strong effect is predicted at SPS, at the RHIC energy it overlaps with the expected peak formed by shadowing effects and needs comparison with pA data. We predict a steep dependence on centrality and suggest that this new probe is complementary to the dependence on transverse energy, and is more sensitive to a scenario of final state interactions.

We study the evolution of charmonia as they collide with the constituents of the fireball produced in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. The latter evolves in a manner controlled by the equation of state as given by lattice QCD, and is constructed in such a way that the observed hadronic spectra are correctly reproduced. A kinetic description of charmonium interactions with both quark-gluon and hadronic degrees of freedom allows to study in detail the evolution in different regimes, controlled by collision energy, kinematics and geometry. The data collected at the CERN-SPS accelerator are well described and new estimates for J/ψ production at BNL-RHIC are presented.

Some properties of the rho vector meson are calculated within the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model, including processes that go beyond the random phase approximation. To classify the higher order contributions, we adopt $1/N_c$ as expansion parameter. In particular, we evaluate the leading order contributions to the $\rho \rightarrow \pi \pi$ decay width, obtaining the value $\Gamma = 118$ MeV, and to the shift of the rho mass which turns out to be lowered by 64 MeV with respect to its RPA value. A set of model parameters is determined accordingly.Comment: 21 pages Latex, 4 figures, to be published in Z. Phys.