Multiparticle production in nuclear collisions using effective-energy approach

Abstract

The dependencies of charged particle pseudorapidity density and transverse energy pseudorapidity density at midrapidity on the collision energy and on the number of nucleon participants, or centrality, measured in nucleus-nucleus collisions are studied in the energy range spanning a few GeV to a few TeV per nucleon. The study is based on the earlier proposed model, combining the constituent quark picture together with Landau relativistic hydrodynamics and shown to interrelate the measurements from different types of collisions. Within this picture, the dependence on the number of participants in heavy-ion collisions are found to be well described in terms of the effective energy defined as a centrality-dependent fraction of the collision energy. The effective energy approach is shown to reveal a similarity in the energy dependence for the most central and centrality data in the entire available energy range. Predictions are made for the forthcoming higher-energy measurements in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC.