Systematic Study of Hadronic Observables in Nucleus Nucleus Collisions at CERN SPS

The possible transition of nuclear matter to a deconfined phase in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions is explored by a systematic variation of the collision system by means of system size, beam energy and centrality of the collision all measured within the same experiment NA49 at the CERN SPS. The investigation takes advantage of the large number of hadronic observables covered over a wide phase space by the acceptance of the NA49 TPCs.