A novel gas-based detector using large arrays of honeycomb cells has been developed and tested for use as a pre-shower photon multiplicity detector (PMD) for STAR and ALICE experiments. The appropriate cell design was arrived at using GARFIELD simulations. Prototype chambers with cell dimensions corresponding to STAR and ALICE were fabricated and tested at CERN PS and SPS. The charged particle detection efficiency and the pre-shower characteristics have been studied using pion and electron beams.

The 8th workshop on high energy physics phenomenology (WHEPP-8) was held at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India during January 5–16, 2004. One of the four working groups, group III was dedicated to QCD and heavy ion physics (HIC). The present manuscript gives a summary of the activities of group III during the workshop (see also [1] for completeness). The activities of group III were focused to understand the collective behaviours of the system formed after the collisions of two nuclei at ultra-relativistic energies from the interactions of the elementary degrees of freedom, i.e. quarks and gluons, governed by non-abelian gauge theory, i.e. QCD. This was initiated by two plenary talks on experimental overview of heavy ion collisions and lattice QCD and several working group talks and discussions.