News from the strong interaction program of NA61/SHINE

TL;DR

The NA61/SHINE experiment at CERN reports new findings on hadron production, system-size and energy dependence, femtoscopy, open charm yields, and isospin symmetry violations in various collision systems, advancing understanding of strong interactions.

Contribution

This paper presents new experimental results on hadron production and symmetry violations in heavy-ion collisions, expanding knowledge of strong interaction phenomena.

Findings

Charged kaon to pion production varies with system size and energy.

Observation of $ ext{phi}(1020)$ spectra and enhancement in Ar+Sc collisions.

Detection of isospin symmetry violation in kaon production.

Abstract

The NA61/SHINE experiment at the CERN SPS is a multipurpose fixed-target spectrometer for charged and neutral hadron measurements. Its research program includes studies of strong interactions as well as reference measurements for neutrino and cosmic-ray physics. This contribution summarizes a selected set of new results from our strong interaction program, including system-size and energy dependence of charged kaon to pion production, $\phi$(1020) spectra in Ar+Sc collisions and enhancement over p+p reactions, femtoscopy of like-sign pions 0 in Ar+Sc and Be+Be collisions, $D^0+\overline{D}^0$ (open charm) yield in Xe+La interactions, and finally an unexpected excess of charged over neutral kaon production indicating a strong violation of isospin symmetry in Ar+Sc collisions.