Charged-particle pseudorapidity distributions in Au+Au collisions atsNN=62.4GeV

Abstract

The charged-particle pseudorapidity density for Au+Au collisions at {radical}(s{sub NN})=62.4 GeV has been measured over a wide range of impact parameters and compared to results obtained at other energies. As a function of collision energy, the pseudorapidity distribution grows systematically both in height and width. The midrapidity density is found to grow approximately logarithmically between BNL Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) energies and the top BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) energy. There is also an approximate factorization of the centrality and energy dependence of the midrapidity yields. The new results at {radical}(s{sub NN})=62.4 GeV confirm the previously observed phenomenon of ''extended longitudinal scaling'' in the pseudorapidity distributions when viewed in the rest frame of one of the colliding nuclei. It is also found that the evolution of the shape of the distribution with centrality is energy independent, when viewed in this reference frame. As a function of centrality, the total charged particle multiplicity scales linearly with the number of participant pairs as it was observed at other energies.