We report the triton (t) production in midrapidity (|y| < 0.5) Au + Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 7.7-200$ GeV measured by the STAR experiment from the first phase of the beam energy scan at the ...Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The nuclear compound yield ratio ($N_t \times N_p / N^2_d$), which is predicted to be sensitive to the fluctuation of local neutron density, is observed to decrease monotonically with increasing charged-particle multiplicity ($dN_{ch}/dη$) and follows a scaling behavior. The $dN_{ch}/dη$ dependence of the yield ratio is compared to calculations from coalescence and thermal models. Enhancements in the yield ratios relative to the coalescence baseline are observed in the 0%-10% most central collisions at 19.6 and 27 GeV, with a significance of 2.3σ and 3.4σ, respectively, giving a combined significance of 4.1σ. The enhancements are not observed in peripheral collisions or model calculations without critical fluctuation, and decreases with a smaller $p_T$ acceptance. The physics implications of these results on the QCD phase structure and the production mechanism of light nuclei in heavy-ion collisions are discussed.
An instrument, AstroBox, has been developed to perform low energy proton spectroscopy from β-delayed proton emitters of interest to astrophysics studies. Energetic precursor nuclei are identified and ...stopped in the gas volume of the detector. The subsequent β or β-proton decay traces ionized paths in the gas. The ionization electrons are drifted in an electric field and are amplified with a Micro Pattern Gas Amplifier Detector (MPGAD). The system was tested in-beam using the β-delayed proton-emitter 23Al, which was produced with the p(24Mg,23Al)2n reaction and separated with the Momentum Achromat Recoil Spectrometer (MARS) at the Cyclotron Institute at Texas A&M University. Off-beam proton spectra have essentially no β background down to ∼100keV and have a resolution of ∼15keV (fwhm) for proton-decay lines at Ep=197 and 255keV. Lines with βp-branching as low as 0.02% are observed. In addition, the device also gives good mass and charge resolution for energetic heavy ions measured in-beam.
To study resonance reactions of heavy ions at low energy we have combined the Thick Target Inverse Kinematics Method (TTIK) with Time of Flight method (TF). We used extended target and TF to resolve ...the identification problems of various possible nuclear processes inherent to the simplest popular version of TTIK. Investigations of the 15N interaction with hydrogen and helium gas targets by using this new approach are presented.
We report on measurements of sequential ϒ suppression in Au+Au collisions at sqrts_{NN}=200 GeV with the STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) through both the dielectron and ...dimuon decay channels. In the 0%-60% centrality class, the nuclear modification factors (R_{AA}), which quantify the level of yield suppression in heavy-ion collisions compared to p+p collisions, for ϒ(1S) and ϒ(2S) are 0.40±0.03(stat)±0.03(sys)±0.09(norm) and 0.26±0.08(stat)±0.02(sys)±0.06(norm), respectively, while the upper limit of the ϒ(3S) R_{AA} is 0.17 at a 95% confidence level. This provides experimental evidence that the ϒ(3S) is significantly more suppressed than the ϒ(1S) at RHIC. The level of suppression for ϒ(1S) is comparable to that observed at the much higher collision energy at the Large Hadron Collider. These results point to the creation of a medium at RHIC whose temperature is sufficiently high to strongly suppress excited ϒ states.
Indirect techniques in nuclear astrophysics: The ANC method Tribble, R.E.
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms,
December 2005, 2005-12-00, Letnik:
241, Številka:
1-4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Asymptotic normalization coefficients (ANCs) have proven to be useful for determining reaction rates of interest in nuclear astrophysics. ANCs, which provide the normalization of the tail of the ...overlap function, determine S factors for direct capture reactions at astrophysical energies. During the past eight years, many ANCs have been measured by peripheral transfer reactions. Following an introduction to ANCs, recent experiments are briefly described. The astrophysical implications of some of these measurements are discussed and a future outlook for ANC measurements with radioactive beams is given.
Here, elliptic flow measurements from two-, four- and six-particle correlations are used to investigate flow fluctuations in collisions of U+U at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 193 GeV, Cu+Au at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = ...200 GeV and Au+Au spanning the range $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 11.5 - 200 GeV. The measurements show a strong dependence of the flow fluctuations on collision centrality, a modest dependence on system size, and very little if any, dependence on particle species and beam energy. The results, when compared to similar LHC measurements, viscous hydrodynamic calculations, and Glauber model eccentricities, indicate that initial-state-driven fluctuations predominate the flow fluctuations generated in the collisions studied.
The STAR Collaboration reports measurements of back-to-back azimuthal correlations of di-π0s produced at forward pseudorapidities (2.6<η<4.0) in p+p, p+Al, and p+Au collisions at a center-of-mass ...energy of 200 GeV. We observe a clear suppression of the correlated yields of back-to-back π0 pairs in p+Al and p+Au collisions compared to the p+p data. The observed suppression of back-to-back pairs as a function of transverse momentum suggests nonlinear gluon dynamics arising at high parton densities. Furthermore, the larger suppression found in p+Au relative to p+Al collisions exhibits a dependence of the saturation scale $Q^{2}_{s}$ on the mass number A . A linear scaling of the suppression with A1/3 is observed with a slope of -0.09±0.01.
In this work, we report cumulants of the proton multiplicity distribution from dedicated fixed-target Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ =3.0 GeV, measured by the STAR experiment in the kinematic ...acceptance of rapidity (y) and transverse momentum (pT) within -0.5 < y < 0 and 0.4 < pT < 2.0 GeV/c. In the most central 0–5% collisions, a proton cumulant ratio is measured to be C4/C2 = –0:85 ± 0:09 (stat:)±0:82 (syst:), which is 2σ below the Poisson baseline with respect to both the statistical and systematic uncertainties. The hadronic transport UrQMD model reproduces our C4/C2 in the measured acceptance. Compared to higher energy results and the transport model calculations, the suppression in C4/C2 is consistent with fluctuations driven by baryon number conservation and indicates an energy regime dominated by hadronic interactions. These data imply that the QCD critical region, if created in heavy-ion collisions, could only exist at energies higher than 3 GeV.
PDF
