We present transverse momentum (p_T) spectra of charged hadrons measured in deuteron-gold and nucleon-gold collisions at sqrts = 200 GeV for four centrality classes. Nucleon-gold collisions were selected by tagging events in which a spectator nucleon
was observed in one of two forward rapidity detectors. The spectra and yields were investigated as a function of the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions, u, suffered by deuteron nucleons. A comparison of charged particle yields to those in p+p collisions show that the yield per nucleon-nucleon collision saturates with u for high momentum particles. We also present the charged hadron to neutral pion ratios as a function of p_T.
Longitudinal density correlations of produced matter in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV have been measured from the inclusive charged particle distributions as a function of pseudorapidity window sizes. The extracted alpha xi parameter, relate
d to the susceptibility of the density fluctuations in the long wavelength limit, exhibits a non-monotonic behavior as a function of the number of participant nucleons, N_part. A local maximum is seen at N_part ~ 90, with corresponding energy density based on the Bjorken picture of epsilon_Bj tau ~ 2.4 GeV/(fm^2 c) with a transverse area size of 60 fm^2. This behavior may suggest a critical phase boundary based on the Ginzburg-Landau framework.
