Eur. Phys. J. C (2024) 84: 416
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-024-12602-2

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Measurements of ${\pi }^{\pm }$, $K^{\pm }$, p and $\overline{p}$ spectra in ${}^{40}{\text{Ar+}}^{45}\text{Sc}$ collisions at 13A to 150A $\text{Ge}\text{V}/c$

¹ National Nuclear Research Center, Baku, Azerbaijan
² Faculty of Physics, University of Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria
³ Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
⁴ LPNHE, University of Paris VI and VII, Paris, France
⁵ Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
⁶ University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
⁷ Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Budapest, Hungary
⁸ Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
⁹ Institute for Particle and Nuclear Studies, Tsukuba, Japan
¹⁰ Okayama University, Okayama, Japan
¹¹ University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
¹² University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
¹³ Jan Kochanowski University, Kielce, Poland
¹⁴ Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Cracow, Poland
¹⁵ National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland
¹⁶ Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
¹⁷ AGH-University of Science and Technology, Cracow, Poland
¹⁸ University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland
¹⁹ University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
²⁰ University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland
²¹ Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland
²² Affiliated with an Institution Covered by a Cooperation Agreement with CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
²³ University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
²⁴ Fermilab, Batavia, USA
²⁵ University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, USA
²⁶ University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
²⁷ University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, USA
²⁸ University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA

^df piotr.podlaski@cern.ch

Received: 13 September 2023
Accepted: 20 February 2024
Published online: 22 April 2024

Abstract

The NA61/SHINE experiment at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron studies the onset of deconfinement in strongly interacting matter through a beam energy scan of particle production in collisions of nuclei of varied sizes. This paper presents results on inclusive double-differential spectra, transverse momentum and rapidity distributions and mean multiplicities of ${\pi }^{\pm }$, $K^{\pm }$, p and $\overline{p}$ produced in ${}^{40}{\text{Ar+}}^{45}\text{Sc}$ collisions at beam momenta of 13A, 19A, 30A, 40A, 75A and 150A $\text{Ge}\text{V}/c$. The analysis uses the 10% most central collisions, where the observed forward energy defines centrality. The energy dependence of the $K^{\pm }$/${\pi }^{\pm }$ ratios as well as of inverse slope parameters of the $K^{\pm }$ transverse mass distributions are placed in between those found in inelastic $p+p$ and central Pb + Pb collisions. The results obtained here establish a system-size dependence of hadron production properties that so far cannot be explained either within statistical or dynamical models.