Some soft aspects of relativistic ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper examines the effectiveness of wounded nucleon and quark participant models in describing high-energy nuclear collision data, including recent results from CERN-SPS experiments and implications for RHIC observations.

Contribution

It compares nucleon and quark frameworks using the nuclear overlap model and discusses their successes and limitations in explaining particle production and spectra.

Findings

Identified particle production data analyzed with both models.

Preliminary pT spectra behavior observed at forward rapidities.

Results relevant to saturation and color glass condensate interpretations.

Abstract

Concepts of wounded nucleon and quark participants have been used for years to parametrize and/or to explain many features of high energy nuclear collisions. Some results illustrating successes and failures of these two approaches are presented, including the latest developments. In particular, results on identified particle production from nuclear collisions measured by the NA49 experiment at the CERN-SPS are shown. The study has been done for both the nucleon and the constituent quark frameworks using the nuclear overlap model. In addition, some preliminary observations concerning the behavior of pT spectra at forward rapidities, expressed in terms of the nuclear modification factor, for hadron-nucleus collisions at the SPS energy are also presented. These results are in relevance to RHIC results for deuteron-gold collisions often interpreted as a manifestation of saturation and/or color glass condensate.