Recent results from NA61/SHINE

TL;DR

NA61/SHINE investigates the properties of strong interactions, focusing on the onset of deconfinement and critical point signatures through energy and system size scans, presenting recent experimental results and comparisons.

Contribution

This paper provides new experimental data on fluctuations, correlations, and spectra of hadrons, highlighting unexpected behaviors in p+p collisions and advancing understanding of the QCD phase diagram.

Findings

Unexpected energy dependence in p+p collisions.

New results on fluctuations and correlations of identified hadrons.

Comparison of experimental data with model predictions.

Abstract

The main physics goals of the NA61/SHINE programme on strong interactions are the study of the properties of the onset of deconfinement and the search for signatures of the critical point of strongly interacting matter. These goals are pursued by performing an energy (beam momentum 13A -158A GeV/c) and system size (p+p, p+Pb, Be+Be, Ar+Sc, Xe+La) scan. This publication reviews results and plans of NA61/SHINE. In particular, recent inclusive spectra and new results on fluctuations and correlations of identified hadrons in inelastic p+p and centrality selected Be+Be interactions at the SPS energies are presented. The energy dependence of quantities inspired by the Statistical Model of the Early Stage (kink, horn and step) show unexpected behavior in p+p collisions. The NA61/SHINE results are compared with the corresponding data of other experiments and model predictions.