Beam Fragmentation in Heavy Ion Collisions and its implication for RHIC triggers at low s

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that realistic modeling of spectator momentum distributions enhances RHIC trigger sensitivity at lower energies, and highlights the importance of fast nucleon production for understanding collision dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a more realistic treatment of spectator momentum distributions, improving trigger sensitivity analysis at low RHIC energies.

Findings

Trigger sensitivity remains high at low energies with realistic models.

Fast nucleon production offers additional insights into collision processes.

Simple Fermi step models are insufficient for accurate predictions.

Abstract

We show that with a realistic treatment of spectator momentum distributions the RHIC detector trigger sensitivity is high even when RHIC is run below injection energies. In particular, a problem region with $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$=10 to 60 or 80 GeV assuming a simple Fermi step model is not found when using a more realistic one. We argue also that production of fast nucleons (with momenta $> p_F$ in the nucleus rest frame) provides complementary information about the collision process.