Correlation between shower partons is first studied in high p T jets. Then in the framework of parton recombination the correlation between pions in heavy-ion collisions is investigated. Since thermal partons play very different roles in central and peripheral collisions, it is found that the correlation functions of the produced hadrons behave very differently at different centralities, especially at intermediate p T . The correlation function that can best exhibit the distinctive features is suggested. There is not a great deal of overlap between what we can calculate and what has been measured.Nevertheless, some aspects of our results compare favorably with experimental data.

A transport model based on the mean free path approach for an interacting meson system at finite temperatures is discussed. A transition to a quark gluon plasma is included within the framework of the MIT bag model. The results obtained compare very well with Lattice QCD calculations when we include a mean field in the QGP phase due to the Debye color screening. In particular the cross over to the QGP at about 175 MeV temperature is nicely reproduced. We also discuss a possible scenario for hadronization which is especially important for temperatures below the QGP phase transition.

The BRAHMS and PHOBOS collaborations recently revisited the limiting fragmentation shown in the charged particle pseudorapidity density distribution in Au + Au collisions at RHIC energies. The PHOBOS collaboration especially emphasized that the observations of the charged particle universal (pseudo)rapidity scaling (limiting fragmentation) in and Au + Au collisions at relativistic energies may play an important role in the study of reaction dynamics. We use a parton and hadron cascade model, PACIAE, to investigate the charged particle universal (pseudo)rapidity scaling in the above collisions. It is pointed out that, because the universal scaling was observed in the tail region of the (pseudo)rapidity distributions, the discrepancies among distributions may not be properly visible. Therefore, this universal scaling may not have much to do with reaction dynamics, especially quark–gluon plasma. In addition, the charged particle universal scaling observed in the hadronic final state seems to arise from the partonic initial state.