Status and plans of the ion program of NA61 at the CERN SPS

TL;DR

NA61/SHINE at CERN SPS is conducting a comprehensive study of hadron production across various collision systems and energies to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter, focusing on deconfinement and the critical point.

Contribution

This paper details the current status, detector upgrades, data collection plans, and initial results of the NA61 ion program aimed at mapping the QCD phase diagram.

Findings

Initial spectra and correlation results presented.

Detector upgrades completed for enhanced measurements.

Systematic scan of phase diagram underway.

Abstract

The NA61/SHINE at the CERN SPS is a new experiment to study hadron production in p+p p+A, h+A and A+A interactions. The main goal of the NA61 ion program is to explore the phase diagram (T - mu_B) of strongly interacting matter. In particular, we plan to study the properties of the onset of deconfinement and to search for the signatures of the critical point. A two-dimensional scan of the phase diagram will be performed by varying the energy (13A-158A GeV) and system size (p+p, Be+Be, Ar+Ca, Xe+La) of collisions. This paper summarizes the status and plans of the NA61/SHINE ion program. In particular the detector upgrades, data taking schedule and the first results on spectra and correlations are discussed.