Highlights from the NA61/SHINE experiment

TL;DR

The NA61/SHINE experiment at CERN investigates the phase diagram of strong interactions through a comprehensive scan of collision energies and system sizes, providing insights into the onset of deconfinement and critical phenomena.

Contribution

This paper summarizes recent experimental results and reports on detector upgrades, advancing the understanding of phase transitions and critical points in high-energy nuclear collisions.

Findings

K/π multiplicity ratios vary with energy and system size

Strange hadron production observed in p+p reactions

Fluctuation measurements indicate critical behavior

Abstract

The NA61/SHINE experiment is a fixed-target, broad acceptance facility at the CERN SPS. This contribution summarizes the most recent results from the strong interactions NA61/SHINE programme and presents news on the detector upgrade in preparation for the future data taking. The strong interactions programme consists in a two-dimensional scan in beam momentum (from 13A to 150A/158A GeV/c, \sqrt{s_{NN}} from 5.1 to 17.3 GeV) and system size (p + p, Be + Be, Ar + Sc, Xe + La reactions). The experiment searches for the second-order critical end-point in the temperature versus baryo-chemical potential phase diagram and studies the properties of the onset of deconfinement discovered by its predecessor, NA49 at the CERN SPS. The presented results include K/{\pi} multiplicity ratios as a function of energy and system size, singly and multi-strange hadron production in p + p reactions, multiplicity and net-charge fluctuations measured by higher order moments in p + p, Be + Be and Ar + Sc collisions, proton and charged hadron intermittency in Ar + Sc and Pb + Pb reactions, HBT measurements in Ar + Sc and collective electromagnetic effects in Ar + Sc collisions.