Identified particle measurements at large transverse momenta from p+p to Au+Au collisions at RHIC

TL;DR

This paper presents a systematic analysis of identified particle spectra at high transverse momenta from various collision systems at RHIC, shedding light on particle production mechanisms and energy loss effects.

Contribution

It provides new measurements of pion, proton, and antiproton spectra across different systems and energies, enhancing understanding of soft and hard particle production processes.

Findings

Spectral shapes vary with collision centrality and system.

Energy loss effects are observed in system-dependent spectra.

Differences between systems highlight fragmentation contributions.

Abstract

Measurements of various particle species over an extended momentum range provide a sensitive experimental tool for investigating particle production mechanisms in hadronic collisions. Comparison of the spectral shapes from different collision centralities measured with the STAR detector at RHIC allows one to study the interplay of soft and hard particle production for mesons and investigate various baryon-meson effects. Systematic studies of identified particle spectra for various colliding systems and different incident energies provide additional insights toward the interplay between fragmentation and non-fragmentation contributions to the particle production. In these proceedings we present a systematic study of transverse momentum spectra for charged pions, protons and antiprotons from Au+Au and Cu+Cu data at sqrt(s_NN)=200 and 62.4 GeV as a function of collision centrality. We compare those measurements with p+p and d+Au data, investigating the system effects on energy loss.