Suppression of hadrons with large transverse momentum in central Au+Au collisions at root square[s(NN)] = 130 GeV

Phys Rev Lett. 2002 Jan 14;88(2):022301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.022301. Epub 2001 Dec 21.

Abstract

Transverse momentum spectra for charged hadrons and for neutral pions in the range 1 GeV/c<p(T)<5 GeV/c have been measured by the PHENIX experiment at RHIC in Au+Au collisions at root square[s(NN)] = 130 GeV. At high p(T) the spectra from peripheral nuclear collisions are consistent with scaling the spectra from p+p collisions by the average number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions. The spectra from central collisions are significantly suppressed when compared to the binary-scaled p+p expectation, and also when compared to similarly binary-scaled peripheral collisions, indicating a novel nuclear-medium effect in central nuclear collisions at RHIC energies.