High- pT charged hadron suppression in Au+Au collisions at sqrt[sNN]=200GeV

The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has measured charged hadron yields at midrapidity over a wide range of transverse momenta (0.5<pT<100.3em0exGeV∕c) in Au+Au collisions at √sNN=2000.3em0exGeV. The data are compared to π⁰ measurements from the same experiment. For both charged hadrons and neutral pions, the yields per nucleon-nucleon collision are significantly suppressed in central compared to peripheral and nucleon-nucleon collisions. The suppression sets in gradually and increases with increasing centrality of the collisions. Above 4--50.3em0exGeV∕c in pT, a constant and almost identical suppression of charged hadrons and π⁰'s is observed. The pT spectra are compared to published spectra from Au+Au at √sNN=130 in terms of xT scaling. Central and peripheral π⁰ as well as peripheral charged spectra exhibit the same xT scaling as observed in $p+p$ data.