No Arabic abstract
At the Kaon Spectrometer KaoS at SIS, GSI the production of kaons and antikaons in heavy ion reactions at a beam energy of 1.5 AGeV has been measured for the collision systems Ni+Ni and Au+Au. The K-/K+ ratio is found to be constant for both systems and as a function of impact parameter but the slopes of K+ and K- spectra differ for all impact parameters. Furthermore the respective polar angle distributions will be presented as a function of centrality.
Production cross sections of K$^+$ and K$^-$ mesons have been measured in C+C collisions at beam energies per nucleon below and near the nucleon-nucleon threshold. At a given beam energy, the spectral slopes of the K$^-$ mesons are significantly steeper than the ones of the K$^+$ mesons. The excitation functions for K$^+$ and K$^-$ mesons nearly coincide when correcting for the threshold energy. In contrast, the K$^+$ yield exceeds the K$^-$ yield by a factor of about 100 in proton-proton collisions at beam energies near the respective nucleon-nucleon thresholds.
Azimuthal distributions of $eta$ and $pi^{0}$ mesons emitted at midrapidity in collisions of 1.9 AGeV $^{58}$Ni+$^{58}$Ni and 2 AGeV $^{40}$Ca+$^{nat}$Ca are studied as a function of the number of projectile-like spectator nucleons. The observed anisotropy corresponds to a negative elliptic flow signal for $eta$ mesons, indicating a preferred emission perpendicular to the reaction plane. The effect is smallest in peripheral Ni+Ni collisions. In contrast, for $pi^{0}$ mesons, elliptic flow is observed only in peripheral Ni+Ni collisions, changing from positive to negative sign with increasing pion transverse momentum.
Azimuthal distributions of $eta$ and $pi^{0}$ mesons emitted at midrapidity in collisions of 1.9 AGeV $^{58}$Ni+$^{58}$Ni and 2 AGeV $^{40}$Ca+$^{nat}$Ca are studied as a function of the number of projectile-like spectator nucleons. The observed anisotropy corresponds to a negative elliptic flow signal for $eta$ mesons, indicating a preferred emission perpendicular to the reaction plane. In contrast, only small azimuthal anisotropies are observed for $pi^{0}$ mesons. This may indicate that $eta$ mesons freeze out earlier from the fire ball than pions.
We review hadron production in heavy ion collisions with emphasis on pion and kaon production at energies below 2 AGeV and on partonic collectivity at RHIC energies.
The ultra-relativistic heavy-ion programs at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider have evolved into a phase of quantitative studies of Quantum Chromodynamics at very high temperatures. The charm and bottom hadron production offer unique insights into the remarkable transport properties and the microscopic structure of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) created in these collisions. Heavy quarks, due to their large masses, undergo Brownian motion at low momentum, provide a window on hadronization mechanisms at intermediate momenta, and are expected to merge into a radiative-energy loss regime at high momentum. We review recent experimental and theoretical achievements on measuring a variety of heavy-flavor observables, characterizing the different regimes in momentum, extracting pertinent transport coefficients and deducing implications for the inner workings of the QGP medium.