Effects of Pileup on Charged particle production from 44.5 AGeV to 100 AGeV fixed-target Au+Au Collisions

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) aims to study the quark-gluon plasma through heavy ion collisions, primarily between collisions of two Au-197 nuclei. When these ions collide, they produce a shower of charged particles, whose counts can be represented as a random sample from the overall particle production distribution. I analyzed data from RHIC consisting of Primary Track vs Barrel time-of-flight data of multiple energies of Au+Au collisions. In order to get a clear view of the data, a phenomenon called “pileup” must have its contribution quantified. One form of pileup occurs when two Au+Au collisions occur simultaneously (in the same beam bucket). Since the number of charged particles produced in each collision is independent, this form of pileup can be represented as a convolution of the given particle production distribution with itself. The resulting multiplicity distribution, whose pileup contribution is quantified, can then be split into several centrality classes. These classes allow us to see the average number of collisions, participants, and impact parameters in relation to particle production. Ultimately allowing us to compare the outcome of nuclear collisions between different types of nuclei and between different energies.