Eur. Phys. J. A (2016) 52: 237
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2016-16237-4

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Baryon stopping in heavy-ion collisions at E_lab = 2A-200A GeV

¹ (NRC “Kurchatov Institute”), National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute, 123182, Moscow, Russia
² (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), National Research Nuclear University “MEPhI”, 115409, Moscow, Russia
³ Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Wroclaw, 50-204, Wroclaw, Poland
⁴ Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, JINR Dubna, 141980, Dubna, Russia

^* e-mail: Y.Ivanov@gsi.de

Received: 29 September 2015
Accepted: 13 November 2015
Published online: 22 August 2016

Abstract

It is argued that an irregularity in the baryon stopping is a natural consequence of the onset of deconfinement occurring in the compression stage of a nuclear collision. It is an effect of the softest point inherent in an equation of state (EoS) with a deconfinement transition. In order to illustrate this effect, calculations within the three-fluid model were performed with three different EoSs: a purely hadronic EoS, an EoS with a first-order phase transition and a third one with a smooth crossover transition. It is demonstrated that this irregularity is a very robust signal of the first-order phase transition that survives under acceptance conditions of the NICA MPD experiment.