Momentum spectra of charged pions over nearly full rapidity coverage from target to beam rapidity have been measured in the 0-5% most central Au+Au collisions in the beam energy range from 2 to 8 AGeV by the E895 Experiment. Using a thermal parameterization to fit the transverse mass spectra, rapidity density distributions are extracted. The observed spectra are compared with predictions from the RQMD v2.3 cascade model and also to a thermal model including longitudinal flow. The total 4$\pi$ yields of the charged pions are used to infer an initial state entropy produced in the collisions.
Rapidity distributions of protons from central $^{197}$Au + $^{197}$Au collisions measured by the E895 Collaboration in the energy range from 2 to 8 AGeV at the Brookhaven AGS are presented. Longitudinal flow parameters derived using a thermal model including collective longitudinal expansion are extracted from these distributions. The results show an approximately linear increase in the longitudinal flow velocity, $<\beta\gamma>_{L}$, as a function of the logarithm of beam energy.
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.
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.
Yields and phase space distributions of φ -mesons emitted from p+p (minimum bias trigger), p+Pb (at various centralities) and central Pb+Pb collisions are reported ( E beam =158 A GeV). The decay φ →K + K − was used for identification. The φ / π ratio is found to increase by a factor of 3.0±0.7 from inelastic p+p to central Pb+Pb. Significant enhancement in this ratio is also observed in subclasses of p+p events (characterized by high charged-particle multiplicity) as well as in the forward hemisphere of central p+Pb collisions. In Pb+Pb no shift or significant broadening of the φ -peak is seen.
Dijet angular distributions from the first LHC pp collisions at center-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = 7 TeV have been measured with the ATLAS detector. The dataset used for this analysis represents an integrated luminosity of 3.1 pb-1. Dijet $\chi$ distributions and centrality ratios have been measured up to dijet masses of 2.8 TeV, and found to be in good agreement with Standard Model predictions. Analysis of the $\chi$ distributions excludes quark contact interactions with a compositeness scale $\Lambda$ below 3.4 TeV, at 95% confidence level, significantly exceeding previous limits.
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.
At sufficiently high temperature and energy density, nuclear matter undergoes a transition to a phase in which quarks and gluons are not confined: the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) [1]. Such an extreme state of strongly-interacting QCD (Quantum Chromo-Dynamics) matter is produced in the laboratory with high-energy collisions of heavy nuclei, where an enhanced production of strange hadrons is observed [2-6]. Strangeness enhancement, originally proposed as a signature of QGP formation in nuclear collisions [7], is more pronounced for multi-strange baryons. Several effects typical of heavy-ion phenomenology have been observed in high-multiplicity proton-proton (pp) collisions [8,9]. Yet, enhanced production of multi-strange particles has not been reported so far. Here we present the first observation of strangeness enhancement in high-multiplicity pp collisions. We find that the integrated yields of strange and multi-strange particles relative to pions increases significantly with the event charged-particle multiplicity. The measurements are in remarkable agreement with p-Pb collision results [10,11] indicating that the phenomenon is related to the final system created in the collision. In high-multiplicity events strangeness production reaches values similar to those observed in Pb-Pb collisions, where a QGP is formed.
In this Letter we report the first results on $\pi^\pm$, K$^\pm$, p and $\mathrm {p\overline{p}}$ production at mid-rapidity ($\left|y\right|<0.5$) in central Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV, measured by the ALICE experiment at the LHC. The $p_{\rm T}$ distributions and yields are compared to previous results at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 200 GeV and expectations from hydrodynamic and thermal models. The spectral shapes indicate a strong increase of the radial flow velocity with $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$, which in hydrodynamic models is expected as a consequence of the increasing particle density. While the ${\rm K}/\pi$ ratio is in line with predictions from the thermal model, the ${\rm p}/\pi$ ratio is found to be lower by a factor of about 1.5. This deviation from thermal model expectations is still to be understood.
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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