Preface

To some extent this licentiate thesis summarizes the first two years of my PhD thesis work. It is based on the following papers:

I	K. Adcox et al.
	Construction and Performance
	of the PHENIX Pad Chambers
	Nucl. Instr. and Methods A 497 (2003) 263
II	K. Adcox et al. (PHENIX collaboration).
	Net Charge Fluctuations in Au + Au
	Interactions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 130 GeV
	Physical Review Letters 89 (2002) 082301
	(The papers are included with the permission of the copyright
	holders, Elsevier Science (paper I) and the American Physical
	Society (paper II). Their cooperation is gratefully acknowledged.)

In chapter 1 of the thesis an introduction to the field of high-energy heavy-ion physics is given. Chapter 2 describes the PHENIX experiment, with some emphasis on the pad chamber detectors. Most of the work on-site at Brookhaven as well as at the home institution has been concentrated on software connected to these detectors (hit reconstruction, detector response simulation, high-voltage settings, online monitoring of performance, etc.). The third and final chapter describes the specific field of research I have focused on; Net Charge Fluctuations. The analysis work in PHENIX lead to the publication of paper II.

I would like to point out that I greatly appreciate the knowledge and insight into the world of computer programming all these activities have brought me.