Recent results and future of the NA61/SHINE strong interactions program

TL;DR

NA61/SHINE at CERN investigates hadron production and phase transitions in strongly interacting matter, presenting recent experimental results and outlining future research directions to discover the critical point and study deconfinement.

Contribution

The paper reviews recent experimental results on particle production in various collision systems and discusses future plans for the NA61/SHINE program.

Findings

Particle production data in p+p, Be+Be, and Ar+Sc collisions.

Comparison with world data shows consistency and new insights.

Future experimental strategies outlined for critical point search.

Abstract

NA61/SHINE is a fixed target experiment at the CERN Super-Proton- Synchrotron. The main goals of the experiment are to discover the critical point of strongly interacting matter and study the properties of the onset of deconfnement. In order to reach these goals the collaboration studies hadron production properties in nucleus-nucleus, proton-proton and proton-nucleus interactions. In this talk, recent results on particle production in p+p interactions, as well as Be+Be and Ar+Sc collisions in the SPS energy range are reviewed. The results are compared with available world data. The future of the NA61/SHINE scientifc program is also presented.