Collective effects in central heavy-ion collisions

In-medium effects on transverse-mass distributions of quarks and gluons are considered assuming a possible local equilibrium for colorless quark objects (mesons and baryons) created in central A-A collisions. It is shown that the average transverse momentum squared for these partons grows and then saturates when the initial energy increases. Within the quark-gluon string model it leads to the colliding energy dependence of hadron transverse mass spectra which is similar to that observed in heavy ion collisions. Comparison with other scenarios is given.