Analysis of the apparent nuclear modification in peripheral Pb–Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV

Abstract

Charged -particle spectra at midrapidity are measured in Pb–Pb collisions at the centre-of-mass energy per nucleon–nucle on pair √sNN=5.02 TeV and presented in centrality classes ranging from most central (0–5%)to most peripheral (95–100%) collisions. Possible medium effects are quantified using the nuclear modification factor (RAA) by comparing the measured spectra with those from proton–proto ncollisions, scaled by the number of independen tnucleon–nucleon collisions obtained froma Glauber model. At large transverse momenta (8<pT<20GeV/c), the average RAA is found to in crease from about 0.15 in 0–5% central to a maximum value of about 0.8 in 75–85% peripheral collisions, beyond which it falls off strongly to below 0.2 for the most peripheral collisions. Furthermore, RAA initially exhibits a positive slope as a function of pT in the 8–20 GeV/c interval, while for collisions beyond the 80% class the slope is negative. To reduce uncertainties related to event selection and normalization, we also provide the ratio of RAA in adjacent centrality intervals. Our results in peripheral collisions are consistent witha PYTHIA-based model without nuclear modification, demonstrating that biases caused by the event selection and collision geometry canlead to the apparent suppression in peripheral collisions. This explains the unintuitive observation that RAA is below unity in peripheral Pb–Pb, but equalto unity in minimum-biasp–Pb collisions despite similar charged-particle multiplicities.