Transverse momentum spectra and rapidity densities, dN/dy, of protons, anti-protons, and net--protons (p-pbar) from central (0-5%) Au+Au collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 200 GeV were measured with the BRAHMS experiment within the rapidity range 0 < y < 3. The proton and anti-proton dN/dy decrease from mid-rapidity to y=3. The net-proton yield is roughly constant for y<1 at dN/dy~7, and increases to dN/dy~12 at y~3. The data show that collisions at this energy exhibit a high degree of transparency and that the linear scaling of rapidity loss with rapidity observed at lower energies is broken. The energy loss per participant nucleon is estimated to be 73 +- 6 GeV.
Mid-rapidity open charm spectra from direct reconstruction of $D^{0}$($\bar{D^0}$)$\to K^{\mp}\pi^{\pm}$ in d+Au collisions and indirect electron/positron measurements via charm semileptonic decays in p+p and d+Au collisions at \srt = 200 GeV are reported. The $D^{0}$($\bar{D^0}$) spectrum covers a transverse momentum ($p_T$) range of 0.1 $<p_T<$ 3 \GeVc whereas the electron spectra cover a range of 1 $<p_T<$ 4 GeV/$c$. The electron spectra show approximate binary collision scaling between p+p and d+Au collisions. From these two independent analyses, the differential cross section per nucleon-nucleon binary interaction at mid-rapidity for open charm production from d+Au collisions at RHIC is $d\sigma^{NN}_{c\bar{c}}/dy$=0.30$\pm$0.04 (stat.)$\pm$0.09(syst.) mb. The results are compared to theoretical calculations. Implications for charmoniumm results in A+A collisions are discussed.
Transverse momentum spectra of protons and anti-protons measured in the rapidity range 0<y<3.1 from 0-10% central Au+Au collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}}=62.4 GeV are presented. The rapidity densities, dN/dy, of protons, anti-protons and net-protons N()p-N(pbar) have been deduced from the spectra over a rapidity range wide enough to observe the expected maximum net-baryon density. From mid-rapidity to y=1 the net-proton yield is roughly constant (dN/dy ~ 10),but rises to dN/dy ~25 at 2.3<y<3.1. The mean rapidity loss is 2.01 +-0.16 units from beam rapidity. The measured rapidity distributions are compared to model predictions. Systematics of net-baryon distributions and rapidity loss vs. collision energy are discussed.
Invariant pT spectra and rapidity densities covering a large rapidity range(-0.1 < y < 3.5) are presented for $\pi^{\pm}$ and $K^{\pm}$ mesons from central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 62.4 GeV. The mid-rapidity yields of meson particles relative to their anti-particles are found to be close to unity ($\pi^-/\pi^+ \sim 1$, $K^-/K^+ \sim 0.85$) while the anti-proton to proton ratio is $\bar{p}/p \sim 0.49$. The rapidity dependence of the $\pi^-/\pi^+$ ratio is consistent with a small increase towards forward rapidities while the $K^-/K^+$ and $\bar{p}/p$ ratios show a steep decrease to $\sim$ 0.3 for kaons and 0.022 for protons at $y\sim 3$. It is observed that the kaon production relative to its own anti-particle as well as to pion production in wide rapidity and energy ranges shows an apparent universal behavior consistent with the baryo-chemical potential, as deduced from the $\bar{p}/p$ ratio, being the driving parameter.
We have measured rapidity densities dN/dy of pions and kaons over a broad rapidity range (-0.1 < y < 3.5) for central Au+Au collisions at sqrt(snn) = 200 GeV. These data have significant implications for the chemistry and dynamics of the dense system that is initially created in the collisions. The full phase-space yields are 1660 +/- 15 +/- 133 (pi+), 1683 +/- 16 +/- 135 (pi-), 286 +/- 5 +/- 23 (K+) and 242 +/- 4 +/- 19 (K-). The systematics of the strange to non--strange meson ratios are found to track the variation of the baryo-chemical potential with rapidity and energy. Landau--Carruthers hydrodynamic is found to describe the bulk transport of the pions in the longitudinal direction.
We present measurements of the rapidity and transverse-momentum distributions of the protons emitted in S+W, O+W, andp+W reactions at 200 GeV/A around the target rapidity (y=1). The rapidity density rises linearly with the transverse energy for all three systems, but the slope forp+W is much steeper than for O+W and S+W. The rapidity density forp+W is much higher than predicted by summing single nucleonnucleon collisions without any nuclear effects, indicating substantial rescattering of the produced particles. The predictions of the VENUS 3 model, including rescattering, show reasonable agreement with the data for all three systems. We do not have evidence for a strong collective flow of the outgoing particles.
Phi meson production is studied by the NA49 collaboration in central Pb+Pb collisions at 20A, 30A, 40A, 80A and 158A GeV beam energy. The data are compared to measurements at lower and higher energies and to microscopic and thermal models. The energy dependence of yields and spectral distributions is compatible with the assumption that partonic degrees of freedom set in at low SPS energies.
An analysis is presented of the rapidity and transverse momentum distributions and of the nuclear stopping power in collisions ofπ+ andK+ mesons with Al and Au nuclei at 250 GeV/c. The experimental results are compared to predictions of the additive quark model and the dual parton model. The AQM offers an overall consistent description of the data in this experiment. The DPM reproduces reasonably well the rapidity spectra in the central and projectile fragmentation regions, but fails to describe the nuclear stopping power.
The PHENIX experiment has measured mid-rapidity transverse momentum spectra (0.4 < p_T < 4.0 GeV/c) of single electrons as a function of centrality in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. Contributions to the raw spectra from photon conversions and Dalitz decays of light neutral mesons are measured by introducing a thin (1.7% X_0) converter into the PHENIX acceptance and are statistically removed. The subtracted ``non-photonic'' electron spectra are primarily due to the semi-leptonic decays of hadrons containing heavy quarks (charm and bottom). For all centralities, charm production is found to scale with the nuclear overlap function, T_AA. For minimum-bias collisions the charm cross section per binary collision is N_cc^bar/T_AA = 622 +/- 57 (stat.) +/- 160 (sys.) microbarns.
A search for Z bosons in the mu^+mu^- decay channel has been performed in PbPb collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre of mass energy = 2.76 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC, in a 7.2 inverse microbarn data sample. The number of opposite-sign muon pairs observed in the 60--120 GeV/c2 invariant mass range is 39, corresponding to a yield per unit of rapidity (y) and per minimum bias event of (33.8 ± 5.5 (stat) ± 4.4 (syst)) 10^{-8}, in the |y|<2.0 range. Rapidity, transverse momentum, and centrality dependencies are also measured. The results agree with next-to-leading order QCD calculations, scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions.
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