Abstract

We report the systematic measurement of protons and light nuclei production in Au+Au collisions at √s NN = 3 GeV by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The transverse momentum (pT ) spectra of protons (p), deuterons (d), tritons (t), 3 He, and 4 He have been measured from midrapidity to target rapidity for different collision centralities. We present the rapidity and centrality dependence of particle yields (dN/dy), average transverse momentum (〈pT 〉), yield ratios (d/p, t/p, 3 He /p, 4 He /p), as well as the coalescence parameters (B2 , B3 ). The 4π yields for various particles are determined by utilizing the measured rapidity distributions, dN/dy. Furthermore, we present the energy, centrality, and rapidity dependence of the compound yield ratios (N p × Nt /N2 d ) and compare them with various model calculations. The physics implications of these results on the production mechanism of light nuclei and the QCD phase structure are discussed.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Notes/Citation Information

©2024 American Physical Society

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.110.054911

Funding Information

We thank Drs. J. Aichelin, E. Bratkovskaya, C. Ko, J. Steinheimer, K. Sun, and W. Zhao for fruitful discussions about the production mechanism of light nuclei. We thank the RHIC Operations Group and RCF at BNL, the NERSC Center at LBNL, and the Open Science Grid consortium for providing resources and support. This work was supported in part by the Office of Nuclear Physics within the U.S. DOE Office of Science; the U.S. National Science Foundation; National Natural Science Foundation of China; Chinese Academy of Science; the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Chinese Ministry of Education; the Higher Education Sprout Project by Ministry of Education at NCKU; the National Research Foundation of Korea; Czech Science Foundation and Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic; Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office; New National Excellency Programme of the Hungarian Ministry of Human Capacities; Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India; the National Science Centre and WUT ID-UB of Poland; the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia; German Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung and Technologie (BMBF); Helmholtz Association; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT); Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS); and Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID) of Chile.

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