Baryon production and net-proton distributions in relativistic heavy ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates net-proton distributions in relativistic heavy ion collisions, demonstrating that a simple emission source model effectively explains experimental data and their dependence on collision centrality and energy.

Contribution

The study introduces a straightforward model incorporating baryon stopping and pair production to describe net-proton distributions and their moments.

Findings

The model reproduces experimental net-proton distribution data.

Higher moments depend on collision centrality and energy.

A single emission source model explains key features of the data.

Abstract

The higher order moments of the net-baryon distributions in relativistic heavy ion collisions are useful probes for the QCD critical point and fluctuations. We study the net-proton distributions and their moments in a simple model which considers the baryon stopping and pair production effects in the processes. It is shown that a single emission source model can explain the experimental data well. Centrality and energy dependence of the distributions and higher moments is discussed.