Jean F. Letessier has been CNRS researcher at the University of Paris since 1978. Prior to that he worked at the Institut de Physique Nucleaire, Orsay where he obtained his thesis on Hyperon-Nucleon Interaction in 1970, under the direction of Prof. R. Vinh Mau, and was a teaching assistant at the University of Bordeaux. Since 1972 he has made numerous contributions to the research area of thermal particle production and applied mathematics.
Part I. A New Phase of Matter?: 1. Micro-bang: big bang in the laboratory
2. Hadrons
3. Vacuum as a physical medium
4. Statistical properties of hadronic matter
Part II. Analysis Tools and Experiments: 5. Nuclei in collision
6. Understanding collision dynamics
7. Entropy and its relevance in heavy ion collisions
Part III. Particle Production: 8. Particle spectra
9. Highlights of hadron production
Part IV. Hot Hadronic Matter: 10. Relativistic gas
11. First look at hadronic gas
12. Hagedorn gas
Part V. QCD, Hadronic Structure and High Temperature: 13. Hadronic structure and quantum chromodynamics
14. Perturbative QCD
15. Lattice quantum chromodynamics
16. Perturbative quark-gluon plasma
Part VI. Strangeness: 17. Thermal flavor production in deconfined phase
18. Strangeness background
19. Hadron freeze-out analysis.
