Bulk properties of the medium produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions from the beam energy scan program

Abstract

The beam-energy scan at RHIC aims to discover whether a critical point exists in the phase diagram of QCD. This paper reports on the most comprehensive measurement of single-particle spectra for a multitude of hadrons from the first run, taken with the STAR experiment. From these the authors infer the kinetic and chemical freeze-out temperatures and the baryon chemical potential as functions of beam energy and centrality. The results provide an opportunity for the beam-energy scan program at RHIC to enlarge the ($T,\ensuremath{\mu}\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}B$) region of the phase diagram to search for the QCD critical point.