Strange Hadron Production at High Baryon Density

TL;DR

This paper presents recent experimental results on strange hadron production in high baryon density heavy-ion collisions at low energies, providing insights into the properties of nuclear matter under such conditions.

Contribution

It reports new measurements of strange hadron production at multiple energies in the STAR Beam Energy Scan phase-II, comparing results with models to understand baryon-rich nuclear matter.

Findings

Transverse momentum spectra and rapidity distributions characterized.

Excitation functions and centrality dependence analyzed.

Results compared with transport model calculations.

Abstract

Strange hadrons have been suggested as sensitive probes of the properties of the nuclear matter created in heavy-ion collisions. At few-GeV collision energies, the formed medium is baryon-rich due to baryon stopping effect. In these proceedings, the recent results on strange hadron production in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}}$ = 3.2, 3.5, 3.9 and 4.5 GeV with the fixed-target mode from the STAR Beam Energy Scan phase-II program are presented. The transverse momentum spectra, rapidity density distributions, excitation function and centrality dependence of strange hadrons ($\rm{K}^0_S,~\Lambda, ~\Xi^-$) are shown. These results are compared with those from higher collision energies and physics implications are discussed by comparing to the transport model calculations.