=== HEAVY ION PHYSICS AT THE SPS - HIPS'98 ===

                      First Announcement



Over the past 12 years the SPS experiments have accumulated a vast
body of data on nucleus-nucleus collisions.  The Pb beam years, in
particular, revealed some rather interesting results, which attracted
a considerable attention also outside of our community.

However, when asked in December 1997, the SPS HI community was unable
to provide the CERN's Director General with a clear summary of the
status of SPS Heavy Ion physics, for his Annual Report to the Council.

Encouraged by CERN's Director of Research, Lorenzo Foa, we are taking
the initiative to launch a discussion of the CERN SPS HI programme, on
a broad scope, aiming at a comprehensive and coherent view of all
experimental results, so that the SPS HI community will be better
prepared for the next time it is asked for a status report.

We propose to focus the discussion around the experimental data,
organizing it along the following topics :

1) Criticaly review the experimental evidence from the different
   experiments for :

- low mass dilepton enhancement and direct photon emission
- J/psi suppression
- strangeness enhancement
- collective behaviour, thermalization, chemical equilibration, flow

2) Explore the connections among different observables and how they
   constrain the possible interpretations;

3) Identify the open questions and evaluate the options for the near
   future SPS Heavy Ion programme

We would like to invite you to participate in this discussion.  Please
let us know if you are willing to actively participate in such an
effort and, if so, send us your opinions on what precise topics you
want to see addressed in this forum.

We are aiming at having a two-day meeting between the interested
people in September 25-27 (a week-end, starting Friday evening) or the
following week, September 30 - October 2nd.  Let us know if any of
these dates is particularly inconvenient to you.  The meeting will
take place in a hotel near CERN.  Partial financial support will be
provided by Lorenzo Foa.

A detailed program for this discussion meeting on Heavy Ion Physics at
the SPS will be prepared and sent to you in a second announcement.


                            Axel Drees and Carlos Lourenco