Production of neutral mesons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

✍ Scribed by R. Novotny

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 421 KB
• Volume: 630
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0375-9474
• DOI: 10.1016/s0375-9474(97)00761-6

✦ Synopsis

The production of neutral mesons (n°jl,¢o) in relativistic heavy ion collisions over a wide dynamic range in energy and system size has been studied using the electromagnetic calorimeter TAPS (Two/Three Arm Photon Spectrometer). The detection of charged reaction products in scintillator hodoscopes allows exclusive measurements as a function of the number of participants. The inclusive production probabilities follow the established systematics. However, at fixed bombarding energies they decrease with system size due to absorption or increase of collective flow. Exclusive measurements comparing the systems Ar+Ca and Au+Au at 800 AMeV show strongly reduced meson multiplicities in the heavy system at the same number of participants. In contrast to n°-production, the observed ~-multiplicities increase quadratically with the number of participants which indicates multi-step processes as expected for subthreshold production. The mr-scaling can be established, but an enhancement at low m t values appears in the heavy systems.