https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-024-01357-9
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Centrality-dependent analysis of hadrons and light nuclei for phase transition insights in intermediate-energy Au–Au collisions
1
Department of Physics, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, 23200, Mardan, Pakistan
2
Department of Physics, College of Science, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, P.O. Box 84428, 11671, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
3
School of Mathematics, Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Hubei University of Automotive Technology, 442002, Shiyan, People’s Republic of China
4
Department of Information systems, Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, Northern Border University, Rafha, Saudi Arabia
b
hialrebdi@pnu.edu.sa
c
20220073@huat.edu.cn
d ajaz@awkum.edu.pk, muhammad.ajaz@cern.ch
Received:
11
January
2024
Accepted:
4
June
2024
Published online:
28
June
2024
This study investigates various hadron species and light nuclei in Au–Au collisions at 
=27 and 39 GeV. The analytical approach employs a two-component standard distribution to extract important parameters, including effective temperature (T), mean transverse momentum (
), initial temperature (
), and multiplicity parameter (
). The average kinetic freeze-out temperature (
) and transverse flow velocity (
) are determined using an alternative method. Results indicate that the first indication of the phase transition, characterized by a plateau-type region in temperature and/or other parameters, appears in the first three centralities at 
and then in the first four centralities at 
for all hadron species. This suggests that with increasing the collision energies, the interval of collision centrality for the potential onset of the phase transition shifts toward the periphery. The parameters, except the , show a slight increase with collision energy, maintaining the same values at specific centralities linked to the phase transition. This supports the transition from hadronic matter to QCD matter. Furthermore, various parameters exhibit an incline or decline nature with collision energy (centrality), and they increase corresponding to the mass of produced particles, confirming a multiple freeze-out scenario. The inequality 
is verified, consistent with the time evolution of the QGP droplet. The analyzed value of for centrality bins responsible for the phase transition is 140 MeV, very close to the QCD predicted QGP’s critical temperature range.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2024. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
