We present high-statistic data on charged pion emission from Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}}$ = 2.4 GeV (corresponding to $E_{beam}$ = 1.23 A GeV) in four centrality classes in the range 0 - 40$\%$ of the most central collisions. The data are analyzed as a function of transverse momentum, transverse mass, rapidity, and polar angle. Pion multiplicity per participating nucleon decreases moderately with increasing centrality. The polar angular distributions are found to be non-isotropic even for the most central event class. Our results on pion multiplicity fit well into the general trend of the world data, but undershoot by $2.5 \sigma$ data from the FOPI experiment measured at slightly lower beam energy. We compare our data to state-of-the-art transport model calculations (PHSD, IQMD, PHQMD, GiBUU and SMASH) and find substantial differences between the measurement and the results of these calculations.
Mid-rapidity and forward rapidity transverse momentum distributions ($p_{t}$) for charged pion for the 10$\%$most central events.
Reduced transverse mass distribution for negatively charged pions in rapidity bins of $\Delta y_{cm}$ = 0.1width between -0.65 and 0.75 for 0-10$\%$ most central events. The most backward rapidity (-0.65 > y$_{cm}$ < -0.55) is shown unscaledwhile for following rapidity slices are scaled up by succesive factors of 10.
Reduced transverse mass distribution for positively charged pions in rapidity bins of $\Delta y_{cm}$ = 0.1width between -0.65 and 0.75 for 0-10$\%$ most central events. The most backward rapidity is shown unscaledwhile for following rapidity slices are scaled up by succesive factors of 10.