About 10 μs after the Big Bang, the universe was filled—in addition to photons and leptons—with strong-interaction matter consisting of quarks and gluons, which transitioned to hadrons at ...temperatures close to kT = 150 MeV and densities several times higher than those found in nuclei. This quantum chromodynamics (QCD) matter can be created in the laboratory as a transient state by colliding heavy ions at relativistic energies. The different phases in which QCD matter may exist depend for example on temperature, pressure or baryochemical potential, and can be probed by studying the emission of electromagnetic radiation. Electron–positron pairs emerge from the decay of virtual photons, which immediately decouple from the strong interaction, and thus provide information about the properties of QCD matter at various stages. Here, we report the observation of virtual photon emission from baryon-rich QCD matter. The spectral distribution of the electron–positron pairs is nearly exponential, providing evidence for a source of temperature in excess of 70 MeV with constituents whose properties have been modified, thus reflecting peculiarities of strong-interaction QCD matter. Its bulk properties are similar to the dense matter formed in the final state of a neutron star merger, as apparent from recent multimessenger observation.
Full text
Available for:
EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
The global polarization of Λ hyperons along the total orbital angular momentum of a relativistic heavy-ion collision is presented based on the high statistics data samples collected in Au+Au ...collisions at sNN=2.4 GeV and Ag+Ag at 2.55 GeV with the High-Acceptance Di-Electron Spectrometer (HADES) at GSI, Darmstadt. This is the first measurement below the strangeness production threshold in nucleon-nucleon collisions. Results are reported as a function of the collision centrality as well as a function of the hyperon's transverse momentum (pT) and rapidity (yCM) for the range of centrality 0–40%. We observe a strong centrality dependence of the polarization with an increasing signal towards peripheral collisions. For mid-central (20 – 40%) collisions the polarization magnitudes are 〈PΛ〉(%)=6.8±1.3(stat.)±2.1(syst.) for Au+Au and 〈PΛ〉(%)=6.2±0.4(stat.)±0.6(syst.) for Ag+Ag, which are the largest values observed so far. This observation thus provides a continuation of the increasing trend previously observed by STAR and contrasts expectations from recent theoretical calculations predicting a maximum in the region of collision energies about 3 GeV. The observed polarization is of a similar magnitude as predicted by 3D-fluid-dynamics and the UrQMD plus thermal vorticity model and significantly above results from the AMPT model.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
3.
Nuclear structure opportunities with GeV radioactive beams at FAIR Aumann, T.; Bertulani, C. A.; Duer, M. ...
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences,
07/2024, Volume:
382, Issue:
2275
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) is in its final construction stage next to the campus of the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung Helmholtzzentrum for heavy-ion research in ...Darmstadt, Germany. Once it starts its operation, it will be the main nuclear physics research facility in many basic sciences and their applications in Europe for the coming decades. Owing to the ability of the new fragment separator, Super-FRagment Separator, to produce high-intensity radioactive ion beams in the energy range up to about 2 GeV/nucleon, these can be used in various nuclear reactions. This opens a unique opportunity for various nuclear structure studies across a range of fields and scales: from low-energy physics via the investigation of multi-neutron systems and halos to high-density nuclear matter and the equation of state, following heavy-ion collisions, fission and study of short-range correlations in nuclei and hypernuclei. The newly developed reactions with relativistic radioactive beams (R 3 B) set up at FAIR would be the most suitable and versatile for such studies. An overview of highlighted physics cases foreseen at R 3 B is given, along with possible future opportunities, at FAIR. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The liminal position of Nuclear Physics: from hadrons to neutron stars’.
We review the current understanding of time-like virtual photon emission from QCD matter. The phenomenology of dilepton emission is discussed and basic theoretical concepts are introduced. The ...experimental findings are presented, grouped into production of lepton pairs in elementary processes, production off cold nuclear matter and emission from heavy-ion collisions. The review emphasizes the role of dilepton emission as tool for studying exotic phases of QCD matter. Open questions and a route to probe the QCD phase diagram with dileptons are outlined.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
.
The centrality determination for Au + Au collisions at 1.23
A
GeV, as measured with HADES at the GSI-SIS18, is described. In order to extract collision geometry related quantities, such as the ...average impact parameter or number of participating nucleons, a Glauber Monte Carlo approach is employed. For the application of this model to collisions at this relatively low centre-of-mass energy of
s
NN
=
2
.
42
GeV special investigations were performed. As a result a well defined procedure to determine centrality classes for ongoing analyses of heavy-ion data is established.
Full text
Available for:
DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Abstract The drift chambers of the HADES experiment at SIS-18 at GSI, Darmstadt/Germany, form the main tracking system of the spectrometer. Designed more than twenty years ago, the whole front-end ...electronics chain is being replaced with state-of-the-art electronics to cope with the increasing failure rate of the old electronics and with advanced requirements of the experiment, e.g. the trigger rate. The new analog signal processing is based on the PASTTREC ASIC, developed for the Straw Tube Tracker of the PANDA Experiment. The digitization of data happens in FPGA-based TDCs. The main challenges of the project are the strict spatial constraints given by the experiment setup to place the front-end boards and the noise sensitivity of the large area gas detectors. In addition, the power consumption needed to be kept low due to thermal constraints.
Employing the Bonn–Gatchina partial wave analysis framework (PWA), we have analyzed HADES data of the reaction p(3.5 GeV)+p→pK+Λ. This reaction might contain information about the kaonic cluster ...“ppK−” (with quantum numbers JP=0− and total isospin I=1/2) via its decay into pΛ. Due to interference effects in our coherent description of the data, a hypothetical K‾NN (or, specifically “ppK−”) cluster signal need not necessarily show up as a pronounced feature (e.g. a peak) in an invariant mass spectrum like pΛ. Our PWA analysis includes a variety of resonant and non-resonant intermediate states and delivers a good description of our data (various angular distributions and two-hadron invariant mass spectra) without a contribution of a K‾NN cluster. At a confidence level of CLs=95% such a cluster cannot contribute more than 2–12% to the total cross section with a pK+Λ final state, which translates into a production cross-section between 0.7 μb and 4.2 μb, respectively. The range of the upper limit depends on the assumed cluster mass, width and production process.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The ultra-thin and highly granular CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) are typically optimized for high rate high precision tracking, which implies the use of a very thin active medium and ...digital readout. Both features hamper using the devices for identifying low momentum particles by means of dE/dx. Still, MAPS feature charge sharing and typically clusters of more than one fired pixel per impinging particles are formed. It was previously shown that the number of fired pixels per cluster scales with the dE/dx, which allowed identifying highly ionizing nuclear fragments 1. Assuming a sufficiently strong response to different dE/dx, this approach could also be considered for distinguishing minimum ionizing particles (MIP) from light fragments like alpha particles in tracking detectors. In this work, we study this response with particle beams with a dE/dx of up to four times the ones of MIPs, for non-irradiated and irradiated chips, with different sensing nodes as implemented in the MIMOSIS-1 prototype used for the vertex detector of the CBM experiment.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Electromagnetic radiation is emitted during the whole course of a heavy-ion collision and can escape from the collision zone without further interactions. This makes it an ideal tool to study the ...properties of hot and dense QCD matter. To model the space-time evolution of the collision at SIS energies a coarse-graining approach is used to convert transport simulations into meaningful temperatures and densities. These parameters serve as input for the determination of the pertinent radiation of thermal dileptons based on an in-medium ρ spectral function that describes available spectra at ultrarelativistic collision energies. The resulting excitation function of the thermal excess radiation provides a baseline for future measurements by the HADES and CBM experiments at GSI/FAIR, and experiments proposed at NICA and J-PARC.
A feasibility study has been performed in order to investigate the performance of the HADES detector to measure the electromagnetic decays of the hyperon resonances
Σ
(
1385
)
0
,
Λ
(
1405
)
and
...Λ
(
1520
)
as well as the production of double strange baryon systems
Ξ
-
and
Λ
Λ
in p + p reactions at a beam kinetic energy of
4.5
GeV
. The existing HADES detector will be upgraded by a new Forward Detector, which extends the detector acceptance into a range of polar angles that plays a crucial role for these investigations. The analysis of each channel is preceded by a consideration of the production cross-sections. Afterwards the expected signal count rates using a target consisting of either liquid hydrogen or polyethylene are summarized.
Full text
Available for:
DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ