System size dependence of baryon-strangeness correlation in relativistic heavy ion collisions from a multiphase transport model

The system size dependence of baryon-strangeness (BS) correlation (CBS) is investigated with a multiphase transport (AMPT) model for various collision systems from ¹⁰B+¹⁰B, ¹²C+¹²C, ¹⁶O+¹⁶O, ²⁰Ne+²⁰Ne, ⁴⁰Ca+⁴⁰Ca, ⁹⁶Zr+⁹⁶Zr, and ¹⁹⁷Au+¹⁹⁷Au at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider energies √sNN of 200, 39, 27, 20, and 7.7 GeV. Both effects of hadron rescattering and a combination of different hadrons play a leading role in baryon-strangeness correlation. When the kinetic window is limited to absolute rapidity $|y|>3$, these correlations tend to be constant after the final-state interaction, whatever kind of hadron subset we choose based on the AMPT framework. The correlation is found to smoothly increase with baryon chemical potential μB, corresponding to the collision system or energy from the quark-gluon-plasma-like phase to the hadron-gas-like phase. In addition, the influence of initial nuclear geometric structures of α-clustered nuclear collision systems of ¹²C+¹²C as well as ¹⁶O+¹⁶O collisions is discussed but the effect is found negligible. The current model studies provide baselines for searching for the signals of the quantum chromodynamics phase transition and critical point in heavy-ion collisions through the BS correlation.