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Acknowledgements

It is a pleasure to record here my gratitude to my thesis advisor, Professor Barbara Jacak, for the education, attention, support and inspiration I have been receiving from her during these years in the NA44 Experiment. I am grateful to Nu Xu for presenting an inspiring example of how to make an intellectual quest the highest priority in the ramified activities a modern experimentalist is engaged in, and to John Sullivan and Hubert van Hecke who exemplified professionalism. It goes without saying that the entire NA44 Collaboration (spokesperson Hans Bøggild, contact person Achim Franz), including people who contributed to its success before my time, shares credit for this work. I acknowledge the help received from Jerry Dodd in my work on the Uranium Calorimeter and the Si pad array, and Michael Murray's helpful information on various issues in the single particle analysis. Discussions and arguments with Ian Bearden were a good school of scientific communication. The faculty and staff members of the Stony Brook Relativistic Heavy Ion group, such as Tom Hemmick, Axel Drees, and Vlad Pantuev, without being NA44 members, had nevertheless a significant impact on my education, which I am pleased to acknowledge. Being at Stony Brook, I enjoyed the privilege to communicate with members of the renown Nuclear Theory group. It was Edward Shuryak who suggested the idea of the sensitivity study with the multifireball event generator. Conversations with Madappa Prakash must be noted for their fine enlightening value. During the second part of this thesis project which dealt with an innovative analysis technique, we received support (in form of discussions, advise, or sometimes just encouragement) from Nikos Antoniou, Igor Dremin, Edward Shuryak, Mikhail Stephanov, and Tom Trainor.