Conference paper

Publication year: 2017

Pages: 836-839

Journal: Nuclear Physics A: Nuclear and Hadronic Physics

Volume number: 967

ISSN: 0375-9474

eISSN: 1873-1554

Open access status: Hybrid

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2017.05.030

Conference: 26th International Conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collissions (Quark Matter)

Publisher: Elsevier

Abstract: 
We study the effect of the chiral symmetry restoration (CSR) on heavy-ion collisions observables in the energy range root S-NN = 3-20 GeV within the Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach. The PHSD includes the deconfinement phase transition as well as essential aspects of CSR in the dense and hot hadronic medium, which are incorporated in the Schwinger mechanism for particle production. Our systematic studies show that chiral symmetry restoration plays a crucial role in the description of heavy-ion collisions at root S-NN = 3-20 GeV, realizing an increase of the hadronic particle production in the strangeness sector with respect to the non-strange one. Our results provide a microscopic explanation for the horn structure in the excitation function of the K+/pi(+) ratio: the CSR in the hadronic phase produces the steep increase of this particle ratio up to root S-NN approximate to 7 GeV, while the drop at higher energies is associated to the appearance of a deconfined partonic medium. Furthermore, the appearance/disappearance of the horn structure is investigated as a function of the system size. We additionally present an analysis of strangeness production in the (T, mu(B))-plane (as extracted from the PHSD for central Au+Au collisions) and discuss the perspectives to identify a possible critical point in the phase diagram.

Harvard Citation style: Moreau, P., Palmese, A., Cassing, W., Seifert, E., Steinert, T. and Bratkovskaya, E. (2017) Evidence for chiral symmetry restoration in heavy-ion collisions, Nuclear Physics A: Nuclear and Hadronic Physics, 967, pp. 836-839. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2017.05.030

APA Citation style: Moreau, P., Palmese, A., Cassing, W., Seifert, E., Steinert, T., & Bratkovskaya, E. (2017). Evidence for chiral symmetry restoration in heavy-ion collisions. Nuclear Physics A: Nuclear and Hadronic Physics. 967, 836-839. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2017.05.030