Experimental Study of Pion Production in U + U Interactions at 192 GeV

Abstract

Studying the properties of strongly interacting quark–gluon plasma (sQGP) is one of the main aims of modern physics. Measuring the invariant yields of neutral pions is one of the best tools for sQGP research, since they can be measured in a wide range of transverse momenta with relatively small statistical and systematic errors. Analysis of specific features of meson production in U + U collisions should help to establish additional constraints on the parameters of theoretical models, and to measure the properties of sQGP more accurately. This work presents the invariant differential transverse-momentum spectra and nuclear modification factors of neutral pions produced in U + U collisions of four different classes of centrality at an energy of 192 GeV.