Suppression of high transverse momentum hadrons at RHIC by (pre-) hadronic final state interactions

✍ Scribed by W. Cassing; K. Gallmeister; C. Greiner

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 835 KB
• Volume: 735
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0375-9474
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2004.01.127

✦ Synopsis

We investigate transverse hadron spectra from proton + proton, deuteron + Au and Au + Au collisions at √ s = 200 GeV and √ s = 17.3 GeV within the Hadron-String Dynamics (HSD) approach which is based on quark, diquark, string and hadronic degrees of freedom as well as PYTHIA calculations for the high-p ⊥ spectra. The comparison to experimental data on transverse mass spectra from p + p, d + Au and Au + Au reactions shows that pre-hadronic effects are responsible for both the hardening of the spectra for low transverse momenta (Cronin effect) as well as the suppression of high-p ⊥ hadrons. The interactions of formed hadrons are found to be negligible in central Au + Au collisions at √ s = 200 GeV for p ⊥ 6 GeV/c, but have some importance for the shape of the ratio R AA at lower p ⊥ values ( 6 GeV/c). The large suppression seen experimentally is attributed to the inelastic interactions of 'leading' pre-hadrons with the dense environment, which could be partly of colored partonic nature in order to explain the large attenuation seen in most central Au + Au collisions.