Strangeness Production in Heavy-Ion Collisions

by Muhammad Usman Ashraf (UCLouvain)

Tuesday 24 Jan 2023, 13:00 → 14:00 Europe/Brussels

Ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions are the most promising tool for the formation of a deconfined high temperature and density state of nuclear matter where partonic interactions dominate, the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) phase diagram can be mapped at various temperatures and baryon chemical potentials to study the different phases of matter. Current theoretical models predict the possible existence of a QCD critical point, which may occur at the edge of the boundary of the first order phase transition at low temperatures and high baryon number chemical potentials (µB) regions. STAR Experiment at  RHIC undertook the Beam Energy Scan phase 1 (BES-I) program from 2010 to 2017 and reported on the Au+Au collisions at 7.7 — 39 GeV. In this talk, I will present some results of identified and strange hadron production from STAR. These results will be then compared with different models. Furthermore, I will also discuss the freeze-out properties of these hadrons extracted from the A Multi Phase Transport model (AMPT). The strange quark density fluctuations, which are sensitive to the QCD critical point will be discussed. 

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