Charge particle universal rapidity scaling in and Au + Au collisions at relativistic energies and its partonic origin

Abstract

The BRAHMS and PHOBOS collaborations recently revisited the limiting fragmentation shown in the charged particle pseudorapidity density distribution in Au + Au collisions at RHIC energies. The PHOBOS collaboration especially emphasized that the observations of the charged particle universal (pseudo)rapidity scaling (limiting fragmentation) in and Au + Au collisions at relativistic energies may play an important role in the study of reaction dynamics. We use a parton and hadron cascade model, PACIAE, to investigate the charged particle universal (pseudo)rapidity scaling in the above collisions. It is pointed out that, because the universal scaling was observed in the tail region of the (pseudo)rapidity distributions, the discrepancies among distributions may not be properly visible. Therefore, this universal scaling may not have much to do with reaction dynamics, especially quark–gluon plasma. In addition, the charged particle universal scaling observed in the hadronic final state seems to arise from the partonic initial state.