Measurements of charged pion and kaon production in central Pb+Pb collisions at 40, 80 and 158 AGeV are presented. These are compared with data at lower and higher energies as well as with results from p+p interactions. The mean pion multiplicity per wounded nucleon increases approximately linearly with s_NN^1/4 with a change of slope starting in the region 15-40 AGeV. The change from pion suppression with respect to p+p interactions, as observed at low collision energies, to pion enhancement at high energies occurs at about 40 AGeV. A non-monotonic energy dependence of the ratio of K^+ to pi^+ yields is observed, with a maximum close to 40 AGeV and an indication of a nearly constant value at higher energies.The measured dependences may be related to an increase of the entropy production and a decrease of the strangeness to entropy ratio in central Pb+Pb collisions in the low SPS energy range, which is consistent with the hypothesis that a transient state of deconfined matter is created above these energies. Other interpretations of the data are also discussed.
The excitation of theΔ resonance is observed in proton collisions on C, Nb and Pb targets at 0.8 and 1.6 GeV incident energies. The mass E0 and widthΓ of the resonance are determined from the invariant mass spectra of correlated (p, π±)-pairs in the final state of the collision: The mass E0 is smaller than that of the free resonance, however by comparing to intra-nuclear cascade calculations, this reduction is traced back to the effects of Fermi motion, NN scattering and pion reabsorption in nuclear matter.
The production of neutral pions has been studied in the reactions 40 Ar + nat Ca , 86 Kr + nat Zr and 197 Au + 197 Au at 1 A GeV. For high energy pions emitted from the heavier systems a steeper than linear rise of the pion multiplicity with the centrality of the reaction is observed, indicating a pion production process other than binary nucleon-nucleon collisions. At low transverse momenta an enhancement of the π 0 -multiplicity increasing with the mass of the collision system is found. Systematic discrepancies between the experimental results and recent BUU, QMD and Cascade calculations are discussed.
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