Identified particle measurements at large transverse momenta from p+p to Au+Au collisions at RHIC

Abstract

Measurements of various particle species over an extended momentum range provide a sensitive experimental tool for investigating particle production mechanisms in hadronic collisions. Comparison of the spectral shapes from different collision centralities measured with the STAR detector at RHIC allows one to study the interplay of soft and hard particle production for mesons and investigate various baryon-meson effects. Systematic studies of identified particle spectra for various colliding systems and different incident energies provide additional insights toward the interplay between fragmentation and non-fragmentation contributions to the particle production. In these proceedings we present a systematic study of transverse momentum spectra for charged pions, protons and antiprotons from Au+Au and Cu+Cu data at sqrt(s_NN)=200 and 62.4 GeV as a function of collision centrality. We compare those measurements with p+p and d+Au data, investigating the system effects on energy loss.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, proceedings for the Lake Louise Winter Institute 2007, 19th-24th February 2007, Alberta, Canad