Extracting kinetic freeze-out temperature and radial flow velocity from an improved Tsallis distribution

TL;DR

This paper uses an improved Tsallis distribution to analyze particle spectra from heavy-ion collisions across a wide energy range, extracting kinetic freeze-out temperatures and radial flow velocities that increase with collision energy.

Contribution

It introduces an enhanced Tsallis distribution model incorporating radial flow for analyzing a broad $p_T$ range in heavy-ion collision spectra, providing new insights into system expansion.

Findings

Both $T_0$ and $eta_T$ increase with collision energy.

Central collisions have slightly higher $T_0$ and $eta_T$ than peripheral.

Values are largely independent of isospin and slightly dependent on particle mass.

Abstract

We analyze the transverse momentum ($p_T$) spectra of identified particles ($\pi^{\pm}$, $K^{\pm}$, $p$, and $\bar p$) produced in gold-gold (Au-Au) and lead-lead (Pb-Pb) collisions over a $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ (center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair) range from 14.5 GeV [one of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) energies] to 2.76 TeV [one of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies]. For the spectra with a narrow $p_T$ range, an improved Tsallis distribution which is in fact the Tsallis distribution with radial flow is used. For the spectra with a wide $p_T$ range, a superposition of the improved Tsallis distribution and an inverse power-law is used. Both the extracted kinetic freeze-out temperature ($T_0$) and radial flow velocity ($\beta_T$) increase with the increase of $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$, which indicates a higher excitation and larger expansion of the interesting system at the LHC. Both the values of $T_0$ and $\beta_T$ in central collisions are slightly larger than those in peripheral collisions, and they are independent of isospin and slightly dependent on mass.