Azimuthal Correlations in the Target Fragmentation Region of High Energy Nuclear Collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how proton and pion distributions and their azimuthal correlations depend on target mass in high-energy nuclear collisions, revealing different correlation patterns for protons and pions and emphasizing the role of rescattering effects.

Contribution

It provides new experimental data on azimuthal correlations and target mass dependence in high-energy nuclear collisions, highlighting the importance of rescattering phenomena.

Findings

Proton yield at backward rapidities scales with target mass.

Protons exhibit back-to-back azimuthal correlations.

Positive pions show side-by-side correlations increasing with target mass.

Abstract

Results on the target mass dependence of proton and pion pseudorapidity distributions and of their azimuthal correlations in the target rapidity range $-1.73 \le \eta \le 1.32$ are presented. The data have been taken with the Plastic-Ball detector set-up for 4.9 GeV p + Au collisions at the Berkeley BEVALAC and for 200 $A\cdot$GeV/$c$ p-, O-, and S-induced reactions on different nuclei at the CERN-SPS. The yield of protons at backward rapidities is found to be proportional to the target mass. Although protons show a typical ``back-to-back'' correlations, a ``side-by-side'' correlation is observed for positive pions, which increases both with target mass and with impact parameter of a collision. The data can consistently be described by assuming strong rescattering phenomena including pion absorption effects in the entire excited target nucleus.