Multiparticle production in nuclear collisions using effective-energy approach

TL;DR

This paper analyzes charged particle production in nuclear collisions across a wide energy range using an effective-energy model that combines constituent quarks and hydrodynamics, revealing universal patterns and making predictions for LHC energies.

Contribution

It introduces an effective-energy approach that unifies collision data across energies and centralities, extending the constituent quark and hydrodynamics model to describe particle production.

Findings

Effective energy describes centrality dependence in heavy-ion collisions.

Universal energy dependence observed for central and non-central collisions.

Predictions provided for future LHC heavy-ion collision measurements.

Abstract

The dependencies of charged particle pseudorapidity density and transverse energy pseudorapidity density at midrapidity on the collision energy and on the number of nucleon participants, or centrality, measured in nucleus-nucleus collisions are studied in the energy range spanning a few GeV to a few TeV per nucleon. The study is based on the earlier proposed model, combining the constituent quark picture together with Landau relativistic hydrodynamics and shown to interrelate the measurements from different types of collisions. Within this picture, the dependence on the number of participants in heavy-ion collisions are found to be well described in terms of the effective energy defined as a centrality-dependent fraction of the collision energy. The effective energy approach is shown to reveal a similarity in the energy dependence for the most central and centrality data in the entire available energy range. Predictions are made for the forthcoming higher-energy measurements in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC.