Baryon stopping as a signal of the mixed phase onset

Abstract

It is argued that the experimentally observed baryon stopping indicates a non-monotonous behaviour as a function of the incident energy of colliding nuclei. This can be quantified by a midrapidity reduced curvature of the net-proton rapidity spectrum and reveals itself as a zigzag irregularity in the excitation function of this curvature. The three-fluid dynamic calculations with a hadronic equation of state (EoS) fail to reproduce this irregularity. At the same time, the same calculations with an EoS involving a first-order phase transition and a crossover one into the quark-gluon phase do reproduce this zigzag behaviour, however only qualitatively.