Particle Production at RHIC

TL;DR

This paper analyzes identified hadron spectra from Cu+Cu collisions at RHIC energies to study how system size and energy influence particle production and freeze-out conditions, providing insights into QCD matter.

Contribution

It presents new measurements of charged pion, kaon, and (anti)proton distributions across different energies and system sizes, extending systematic studies of bulk properties at RHIC.

Findings

System size influences baryon and meson production ratios.

Energy dependence observed in freeze-out parameters.

Bridging data between small and large collision systems.

Abstract

Identified hadron spectra and ratios provide a unique tool to study the bulk particle production in heavy-ion collisions and explore the QCD phase diagram. In these proceedings we present the analysis of charged pion, kaon and (anti)proton distributions from sqrt(s_NN)=200 and 62.4 GeV Cu+Cu collisions, collected by the STAR experiment. New measurements extend the systematic studies of bulk properties, addressing the energy and the system size dependence of freeze-out parameters at RHIC. The available centrality selection of Cu+Cu data bridge the gap between the smaller d+Au and larger Au+Au systems, allowing a detailed study of baryon relative to meson and strangeness production as function of system size.