Nuclear-modification factor of charged hadrons at forward and backward rapidity in Al and Au collisions at GeV

Aidala, C.*; 長谷川 勝一; 今井 憲一*; 佐甲 博之; 佐藤 進; 谷田 聖; PHENIX Collaboration*; 他297名*

Physical Review C, 101(3), p.034910_1 - 034910_16, 2020/03

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.101.034910

The PHENIX experiment has studied nuclear effects in Al and Au collisions at GeV on charged hadron production at forward rapidity (, -going direction) and backward rapidity (, -going direction). Such effects are quantified by measuring nuclear modification factors as a function of transverse momentum and pseudorapidity in various collision multiplicity selections. In central Al and Au collisions, a suppression (enhancement) is observed at forward (backward) rapidity compared to the binary scaled yields in + collisions. The magnitude of enhancement at backward rapidity is larger in Au collisions than in Al collisions, which have a smaller number of participating nucleons. However, the results at forward rapidity show a similar suppression within uncertainties. The results in the integrated centrality are compared with calculations using nuclear parton distribution functions, which show a reasonable agreement at the forward rapidity but fail to describe the backward rapidity enhancement.