Microscopic coloured quark dynamics in the soft non-perturbative regime - description of hadron formation in relativistic S + Au collisions at CERN

The quark molecular dynamics model is used to study microscopically the dynamics of the coloured quark phase and the subsequent hadron formation in relativistic S+Au collisions at the CERN-SPS. Particle spectra and hadron ratios are compared to both data and the results of hadronic transport calculations. The non-equilibrium dynamics of hadronization and the loss of correlation among quarks are studied.