Production of protons and light nuclei in <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mi>Au</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mi>Au</mml:mi></mml:math> collisions at <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msqrt><mml:msub><mml:mi>s</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:mi>N</mml:mi><mml:mi>N</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:msqrt><mml:mspace width="0.16em"/><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mspace width="0.16em"/><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math> GeV with the STAR detector
M. I. Abdulhamid, B. E. Aboona, J. Adam, Lidia Adamczyk, J. R. Adams, I. Aggarwal, M. M. Aggarwal, Z. Ahammed, E. C. Aschenauer, S. Aslam, J. Atchison, V. Bairathi, J. G. Ball Cap, K. Barish, R. Bellwied, P. Bhagat, A. Bhasin, S. Bhatta, S. R. Bhosale, J. Bielcik, J. Bielčíková, J. D. Brandenburg, C. Broodo, X. Z. Cai, H. Caines, M. Calderón de la Barca Sánchez, D. Cebra, J. Ceska, I. Chakaberia, P. Chaloupka, B. K. Chan, Z. Chang, A. Chatterjee, D. Chen, Jing Chen, J. H. Chen, Qinyu Chen, Z. Chen, J. Cheng, Y. Cheng, W. Christie, X. Chu, H. J. Crawford, M. Csanád, G. Dale-Gau, Arpan Das, I. M. Deppner, A. Deshpande, A. Dhamija, P. Dixit, Xiang-Kun Dong, J. L. Drachenberg, E. Duckworth, J. C. Dunlop, J. Engelage, G. Eppley, S. Esumi, O. Evdokimov, O. Eyser, R. Fatemi, S. Fazio, C. Feng, Yuliang Feng, E. Finch, Y. Fisyak, F. Flor, C. D. Fu, C. A. Gagliardi, T. Galatyuk, Tong Gao, F. J. M. Geurts, N. Ghimire, A. Gibson, K. Gopal, X. Gou, D. Grosnick, A. Gupta, W. Guryn, A. Hamed, Yimo Han, S. Harabasz, M. D. Harasty, J. W. Harris, H. Harrison-Smith, W. He, X. H. He, Yang He, N. Herrmann, L. Holub, Cong Hu, Qingmao Hu, Y. Hu, H. Z. Huang, H. Z. Huang, S. Huang, Tao Huang, Yidong Huang, Yidong Huang, T. J. Humanic, M. Isshiki
Abstract
We report the systematic measurement of protons and light nuclei production in $\mathrm{Au}+\mathrm{Au}$ collisions at $\sqrt{{s}_{NN}}\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}3\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{GeV}$ by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The transverse momentum $({p}_{T})$ spectra of protons $(p)$, deuterons $(d)$, tritons $(t)$, $^{3}\mathrm{He}$, and $^{4}\mathrm{He}$ have been measured from midrapidity to target rapidity for different collision centralities. We present the rapidity and centrality dependence of particle yields $(dN/dy)$, average transverse momentum $(\ensuremath{\langle}{p}_{T}\ensuremath{\rangle})$, yield ratios $(d/p,$ $t/p,^{3}\mathrm{He}/p,$ $^{4}\mathrm{He}/p)$, as well as the coalescence parameters $({B}_{2},$ ${B}_{3})$. The $4\ensuremath{\pi}$ yields for various particles are determined by utilizing the measured rapidity distributions, $dN/dy$. Furthermore, we present the energy, centrality, and rapidity dependence of the compound yield ratios $({N}_{p}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{N}_{t}/{N}_{d}^{2})$ and compare them with various model calculations. The physics implications of these results on the production mechanism of light nuclei and the QCD phase structure are discussed.