Energy scan by $\phi$ mesons and threshold energy for the confinement-deconfinement phase transition

TL;DR

This paper proposes that the ratio of phi meson multiplicity to the cube of mean transverse momentum indicates a phase transition in heavy ion collisions, identifying a threshold energy for deconfinement.

Contribution

It introduces a new observable ratio to identify the confinement-deconfinement phase transition and estimates the threshold energy from existing data.

Findings

The ratio correlates with medium degeneracy in heavy ion collisions.

A threshold energy of approximately 15.74 GeV marks the phase transition.

Evidence suggests a crossover from confined to deconfined phase at this energy.

Abstract

We argue that the ratio of $\phi$ mesons multiplicity over cube of the mean $p_T$ is proportional to the degeneracy of the medium produced in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. The ratio extracted from the existing $\phi$ meson data in the energy range $\sqrt{s}$=6.3-200 GeV, indicate that beyond a threshold energy $\sqrt{s}_{th}=15.74\pm 8.10$ GeV, the medium crosses over from a confined phase to a deconfined phase.