Lessons from PHOBOS

Abstract

In June 2005 the PHOBOS Collaboration completed data taking at RHIC. In five years of operation PHOBOS recorded information for Au+Au at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 19.6, 62.4, 130, and 200 GeV, Cu+Cu at 22.4, 62.4 and 200 GeV, d+Au at 201 GeV, and p+p at 200 and 410 GeV, altogether more than one billion collisions. Using these data we have studied the energy and centrality dependence of the global properties of charged particle production over essentially the full 4$\pi$ solid angle and (for pions near mid rapidity) charged particle spectra down to transverse momenta below 30 MeV/c. We have also studied correlations of particles separated in pseudorapidity by up to 6 units. We find that the global properties of heavy ion collisions can be described in terms of a small number of simple dependencies on energy and centrality, and that there are strong correlations between the produced particles. To date no single model has been proposed which describes this rich phenomenology. In this talk I summarize what the data is explicitly telling us.

8 pages, 15 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Elliptic flow for phi mesons and (anti)deuterons in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
• Forward-Backward Multiplicity Correlations in sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV Gold-Gold Collisions
• Cluster properties from two-particle angular correlations in p+p collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 200 and 410 GeV
• System Size, Energy and Centrality Dependence of Pseudorapidity Distributions of Charged Particles in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
• Identified hadron transverse momentum spectra in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_(NN))=62.4 GeV
• Trends in multiparticle production and some "predictions" for pp and PbPb collisions at LHC
• Scaling properties in bulk and p${}_{\mathrm{T}}$-dependent particle production near midrapidity in relativistic heavy ion collisions
• Centrality Dependence of Two-Particle Correlations in Heavy Ion Collisions
• Structure and Fine Structure in Multiparticle Production Data at High Energies

Cited by in corpus (9)

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• Rapidity scaling of multiplicity and flow in weakly and strongly interacting systems
• Transverse energy and charged particle production in heavy-ion collisions: From RHIC to LHC
• Baryon anomaly and strong color fields in Pb+Pb collisions at 2.76A TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
• Extended Longitudinal Scaling: direct evidence of saturation
• Scaling of multiplicity and flow: pre-LHC trends and LHC surprises
• A Summary of Bulk Dynamics from Quark Matter 2009