Study of non-equilibrium effects and thermal properties of heavy ion collisions using a covariant approach

Non-equilibrium effects are studied using a full Lorentz-invariant formalism. Our analysis shows that in reactions considered here, no global or local equilibrium is reached. The heavier masses are found to be equilibrated more than the lighter systems. The local temperature is extracted using hot Thomas Fermi formalism generalized for the case of two interpenetrating pieces of nuclear matter. The temperature is found to vary linearly with bombarding energy and impact parameter whereas it is nearly independent of the mass of the colliding nuclei. This indicates that the study of temperature with medium size nuclei is also reliable. The maximum temperatures obtained in our approach are in a nice agreement with earlier calculations of other approaches. A simple parametrization of maximal temperature as a function of the bombarding energy is also given.