The NA61/SHINE experiment at the CERN SPS is performing a uniqe study of the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter by varying collision energy and nuclear mass number of colliding nuclei. In central Pb+Pb collisions the NA49 experiment found structures in the energy dependence of several observables in the CERN SPS energy range that had been predicted for the transition to a deconfined phase. New measurements of NA61/SHINE find intriguing similarities in p+p interactions for which no deconfinement transition is expected at SPS energies. Possible implications will be discussed.
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We report high statistics measurements of inclusive charged hadron production in Au+Au and p+p collisions at \sqrtsNN=200 GeV. A large, approximately constant hadron suppression is observed in central Au+Au collisions for $5\lt\pT\lt12$ GeV/c. The collision energy dependence of the yields and the centrality and \pT dependence of the suppression provide stringent constraints on theoretical models of suppression. Models incorporating initial-state gluon saturation or partonic energy loss in dense matter are largely consistent with observations. We observe no evidence of \pT-dependent suppression, which may be expected from models incorporating jet attentuation in cold nuclear matter or scattering of fragmentation hadrons.
Inclusive invariant pT distributions of (h+ + h−)/2 for centrality-selected Au+Au and p+p NSD interactions. Hash marks at the top indicate bin boundaries for pT>4 GeV/c.The invariant cross section for p+p is indicated on the right vertical axis.
R200/130(pT ) vs. pT for (h+ + h−)/2 for four different centrality bins. The overall normalization uncertainty is +6−14% for the 40-60% bin and is negligible for the other panels. Calculations are described in the text.
RAA(pT) (Eq. 1) for (h+ + h−)/2 in |η|<0.5, for centrality-selected Au+Au spectra relative to the measured p+p spectrum. The p+p spectrum is common to all panels. Calculations are described in the text.