Constraining the equation of state with identified particle spectra

TL;DR

This paper links experimental particle spectra from nucleus collisions to the equation of state by analyzing the mean transverse mass variation with energy, providing a method to estimate the pressure-to-energy density ratio at different densities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to constrain the equation of state using identified particle spectra and mean transverse mass data from heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Effective entropy densities are identified for RHIC and LHC energies.

The pressure over energy density ratio is estimated as 0.21±0.10.

Results agree with lattice QCD calculations at corresponding temperatures.

Abstract

We show that in a central nucleus-nucleus collision, the variation of the mean transverse mass with the multiplicity is determined, up to a rescaling, by the variation of the energy over entropy ratio as a function of the entropy density, thus providing a direct link between experimental data and the equation of state. Each colliding energy thus probes the equation of state at an effective entropy density, whose approximate value is $19$ fm$^{-3}$ for Au+Au collisions at 200 GeV and $41$ fm$^{-3}$ for Pb+Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV, corresponding to temperatures of $227$ MeV and $279$ MeV if the equation of state is taken from lattice calculations. The relative change of the mean transverse mass as a function of the colliding energy gives a direct measure of the pressure over energy density ratio $P/\epsilon$, at the corresponding effective density. Using RHIC and LHC data, we obtain $P/\epsilon=0.21\pm 0.10$, in agreement with the lattice value $P/\epsilon=0.23$ in the corresponding temperature range. Measurements over a wide range of colliding energies using a single detector with good particle identification would help reducing the error.