ABSTRACT
The matter produced at central rapidity may reach extremely high temperatures and energy densities, and it is that one expects to produce thermodynamic conditions similar to those which existed when the early universe condensed from a plasma of quarks and gluons to a gas of hadrons. The required detection technology for tracking, calorimetry, particle identification and fast trigger decisions has a great deal in common with components of high energy physics experiments. Calorimeters measure the energy, position and direction of particles through total absorption of the incident energy in a dense material that has been laced with a matrix of active readout elements. The limiting energy resolution of a calorimeter is determined by fluctuations intrinsic to the mechanism of shower development. The underlying phenomena are statistical processes whose effects grow in magnitude as E, where E is the deposited energy.
