Charged pion, kaon, proton and antiproton production in large collision systems

The main goal of PHENIX expirement, located at Relativistic Heavy-ion collider, is the investigation of quark-gluon plasma (QGP). One of the aspects of the QGP study is describing the process of its hadronization. Very important contribution to understanding of hadronization process was given by discovering of anomaly large ratio of protons production to pions production (ρ/π) in Au+Au collisions in comparison to the same ratio in proton-proton collisions. This effect was called baryon puzzle and was explained in a frame of recombination model of hadronization. Although charged hadrons production has been previously studied in elementary proton-proton collisions and symmetric Au+Au collisions, it has never been investigated before in the large asymmetric collisions systems (such as Cu+Au) or the collisions of large deformed nuclei (U+U). The study of such large collisions systems allows to study features of baryon and meson production versus collision geometry and system size.

Development of a Neutron Imaging Station at the n_TOF Facility of CERN and Applications to Beam Intercepting Devices

A neutron radiography testing station has been developed exploiting the neutron beam of CERN’s n_TOF Experimental Area 2, located at the shortest distance to the neutron producing-target. The characteristics of the n_TOF neutron beam for the imaging setup are presented in this paper, together with the obtained experimental results. The results focused on the testing of several particle producing targets, including a spent antiproton production targets as well as targets from two different HiRadMat’s experiments. The possible developments of neutron imaging capabilities of the n_TOF facility in terms of detection-systems and beam-line upgrades are as well outlined.