Effect of final state interactions on particle production in $d$+Au collisions at RHIC

TL;DR

This study investigates how final state interactions influence particle production in d+Au collisions at RHIC, highlighting the roles of hadronic rescatterings and hadronization mechanisms in shaping observed particle yields.

Contribution

The paper compares string fragmentation and parton coalescence models to explain particle production, emphasizing the importance of hadronic rescatterings and strangeness effects.

Findings

Mass dependence of R_{CP} with string fragmentation matches experimental data.

Parton coalescence reduces mass dependence, highlighting strangeness effects.

Initial-state effects may also influence the p_{T} dependence of R_{CP}.

Abstract

We show that particle species dependence of enhanced hadron production at intermediate transverse momentum (p_{T}) for d+Au collisions at RHIC can be understood in terms of the hadronic rescatterings in the final state. A multiphase transport model (AMPT) with two different hadronization mechanisms: string fragmentation or parton coalescence, is used in our study. When the hadrons are formed from string fragmentation, the subsequent hadronic rescatterings will result in particle mass dependence of nuclear modification factor R_{CP}, which is consistent with the present experimental data. On the other hand, in the framework of parton coalescence, the mass dependence disappears and the strangeness plays an important role. Both mechanisms failed to reproduce the p_{T} dependence of R_{CP} of pion, indicating that initial-state effects might be also important in such collisions.