New information on the dynamics of relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions

Abstract

Relativistic heavy-ion collisions offer a unique opportunity to study highly excited dense nuclear matter in the laboratory. We present measurements of identified charged hadron production at different rapidities from Au+Au and p+p collisions at 200 GeV. Coulomb effects on pion spectra in relativistic nuclear collisions at RHIC energies will be investigated. The nuclear modification factors for identified particles show distinct meson/baryon dependence. At high p T the charged pion yields are suppressed by a factor of ~5, while the baryon production is enhanced in Au+Au collisions, when compared to the binary scaled p+p data from the same energy.