Speaker
Description
Charged particles in heavy-ion collisions have various production mechanisms, such as thermal and associated production, and the importance of each changes with the collision energy. Studying the yields of charged particles provides a way to investigate the properties of the produced QCD matter in heavy-ion collisions and the various production mechanisms. The RHIC Beam Energy Scan (BES) programs cover a wide range of energies, including the transition from a hadronic dominated medium to a partonic dominated medium. The recently completed BES-II program was designed to improve and extend upon the results from the BES-I program. Of particular interest is the high baryon density region which is accessible through the STAR fixed-target program, extending the energy reach from $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=7.7$ GeV down to $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=3.0$ GeV. This presentation reports on measurements of charged particle production in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=3.0$ GeV. Measurements of the proton stopping will be presented in addition to measurements of the production of $K^{+}$ in association with the $\Lambda$ baryon. Invariant yields and rapidity density distributions of $\pi^{\pm}$, $K^{\pm}$, and $p$ will also be presented, which will help to unravel the relative importance of the different particle production mechanisms. These measurements provide an in-depth study of the various production mechanisms for light hadrons and probe unique properties of the high baryon density medium produced in these low energy collisions.
