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We present an analysis of the anisotropic flow harmonics in Pb+Pb collisions at beam momenta of 30A GeV/c collected by the NA61/SHINE experiment in the year 2016. Directed and elliptic flow coefficients are measured relative to the spectator plane estimated with the Projectile Spectators Detector (PSD). The flow coefficients are reported as a function of transverse momentum in different classes of collision centrality. The results are compared with a new analysis of the NA49 data for Pb+Pb collisions at 40A GeV using forward calorimeters (VCal and RCal) for event plane estimation.
Kaon and pion production in centrality selected minimum bias Pb+Pb collisions at 40 and 158A GeV
(2009)
Results on charged kaon and negatively charged pion production and spectra for centrality selected Pb+Pb mininimum bias events at 40 and 158A GeV have been presented in this thesis. All analysis are based on data taken by the NA49 experiment at the accelerator Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. The kaon results are based on an analysis of the mean energy loss <dE/dx> of the charged particles traversing the detector gas of the time projection chambers (TPCs). The pion results are from an analysis of all negatively charged particles h- corrected for contributions from particle decays and secondary interactions. For the dE/dx analysis of charged kaons, main TPC tracks with a total momentum between 4 and 50 GeV have been analyzed in logarithmic momentum log(p) and transverse momentum pt bins. The resulting dE/dx spectra have been fitted by the sum of 5 Gaussians, one for each main particle type (electrons, pions, kaons, protons, deuterons). The amplitude of the Gaussian used for the kaon part of the spectra has been corrected for efficiency and acceptance and the binning has been transformed to rapidity y and transverse momentum pt bins. The multiplicity dN/dy of the single rapidity bins has been derived by summing the measured range of the transverse momentum spectra and an extrapolation to full coverage with a single exponential function fitted to the measured range. The results have been combined with the mid-rapidity measurements from the time-of-flight detectors and a double Gaussian fit to the dN/dy spectra has been used for extrapolation to rapidity outside of the acceptance of the dE/dx analysis. For the h- analysis of negatively charged pions, all negatively charged tracks have been analyzed. The background from secondary reactions, particle decays, and gamma-conversions has been corrected with the VENUS event generator. The results were also corrected for efficiency and acceptance and the pt spectra were analyzed and extrapolated where necessary to derive the mean yield per rapidity bin dN/dy. The mean multiplicity <pi-> has been derived by summing up the measured dN/dy and extrapolating the rapidity spectrum with a double Gaussian fit to 4pi coverage. The results have been discussed in detail and compared to various model calculations. Microscopical models like URQMD and HSD do not describe the full complexity of Pb+Pb collisions. Especially the production of the positively charged kaons, which carry the major part of strange quarks, cannot be consistently reproduced by the model calculations. Centrality selected minimum bias Pb+Pb collisions can be described as a mixture of a high-density region of multiply colliding nucleons (core) and practically independent nucleon-nucleon collisions (corona). This leads to a smooth evolution from peripheral to central collisions. A more detailed approach derives the ensemble volume from a percolation of elementary clusters. In the percolation model all clusters are formed from coalescing strings that are assumed to decay statistically with the volume dependence of canonical strangeness suppression. The percolation model describes the measured data for top SPS and RHIC energies. At 40A GeV, the system size dependence of the relative strangeness production starts to evolve from the saturation seen at higher energies from peripheral events onwards towards a linear dependence at SIS and AGS. This change of the dependence on system size occurs in the energy region of the observed maximum of the K+ to pi ratio for central Pb+Pb collisions. Future measurements with heavy ion beam energies around this maximum at RHIC and FAIR as well as the upgraded NA49 successor experiment NA61 will further improve our understanding of quark matter and its reflection in modern heavy ion physics and theories.
In this work data of the NA49 experiment at CERN SPS on the energy dependence of multiplicity fluctuations in central Pb+Pb collisions at 20A, 30A, 40A, 80A and 158A GeV, as well as the system size dependence at 158A GeV, is analysed for positively, negatively and all charged hadrons. Furthermore the rapidity and transverse momentum dependence of multiplicity fluctuations are studied. The experimental results are compared to predictions of statistical hadron-gas and string-hadronic models. It is expected that multiplicity fluctuations are sensitive to the phase transition to quark-gluon-plasma (QGP) and to the critical point of strongly interacting matter. It is predicted that both the onset of deconfinement, the lowest energy where QGP is created, and the critical point are located in the SPS energy range. Furthermore, the predictions for the multiplicity fluctuations of statistical and string-hadronic models are different, the experimental data might allow to distinguish between them. The used measure of multiplicity fluctuations is the scaled variance omega, defined as the ratio of the variance and the mean of the multiplicity distribution. In the NA49 experiment the tracks of charged particles are detected in four large volume time projection chambers (TPCs). In order to remove possible detector effects a detailed study of event and track selection criteria is performed. Naively one would expect Poisson fluctuations in central heavy ion collisions. A suppression of fluctuations compared to a Poisson distribution is observed for positively and negatively charged hadrons at forward rapidity in Pb+Pb collisions. At midrapidity and for all charged hadrons the fluctuations are larger than the Poisson ones. The fluctuations seem to increase with decreasing system size. It is suggested that this is due to increased relative fluctuations in the number of participants. Furthermore, it was discovered that omega increases for decreasing rapidity and transverse momentum. A hadron-gas model predicts different values of omega for different statistical ensembles. In the grand-canonical ensemble, where all conservation laws are fulfilled only on the average, not on an event-by-event basis, the predicted fluctuations are the largest ones. In the canonical ensemble the charges, namely the electrical charge, the baryon number and the strangeness, are conserved for each event. The scaled variance in this ensemble is smaller than for the grand-canonical ensemble. In the micro-canonical ensemble not only the charges, but also the energy and the momentum are conserved in each event, the predicted $omega$ is the smallest one. The grand-canonical and canonical formulations of the hadron-gas model over-predict fluctuations in the forward acceptance. In contrast to the experimental data no dependence of omega on rapidity and transverse momentum is expected. For the micro-canonical formulation, which predicts small fluctuations in the total phase space, no quantitative calculation is available yet for the limited experimental acceptance. The increase of fluctuations for low rapidities and transverse momenta can be qualitatively understood in a micro-canonical ensemble as an effect of energy and momentum conservation. The string-hadronic model UrQMD significantly over-predicts the mean multiplicities but approximately reproduces the scaled variance of the multiplicity distributions at all measured collision energies, systems and phase-space intervals. String-hadronic models predict for Pb+Pb collisions a monotonous increase of omega with collision energy, similar to the observations for p+p interactions. This is in contrast to the predictions of the hadron-gas model, where omega shows no energy dependence at higher energies. At SPS energies the predictions of the string-hadronic and hadron-gas models are in the same order of magnitude, but at RHIC and LHC energies the difference in omega in the full phase space is much larger. Experimental data should be able to distinguish between them rather easily. Narrower than Poissonian (omega < 1) multiplicity fluctuations measured in the forward kinematic region (1<y(pi)<y_{beam}) can be related to the reduced fluctuations predicted for relativistic gases with imposed conservation laws. This general feature of relativistic gases may be preserved also for some non-equilibrium systems as modeled by the string-hadronic approaches. A quantitative estimate shows that the predicted maximum in fluctuations due to a first order phase transition from hadron-gas to QGP is smaller than the experimental errors of the present experiment and can therefore neither be confirmed nor disproved. No sign of increased fluctuations as expected for a freeze-out near the critical point of strongly interacting matter is observed.