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Coherent particle production in collisions of relativistic nuclei

Here we give the results of our study of features of dense groups, or spikes, of particles produced in Mg-Mg and C-Cu collisions at, respectively, 4.3 and 4.5 GeV/c/nucleon aimed to search for a coherent, Cerenkov-like, mechanism of hadroproduction. We investigate the distributions of spike centers and, for Mg-Mg interactions, the energy spectra of negatively charged particles in spikes. The spike-center distributions are obtained to exhibit the structure expected from coherent gluon-jet emission dynamics. This structure is similar in both cases considered, namely for all charged and negatively charged particles, and is also similar to that observed recently for all-charged-particle spikes in hadronic interactions. The energy distribution within spikes is found to have a significant peak over the inclusive background, while the inclusive spectrum shows exponential decrease with two characteristic values of average kinetic energy. The value of the peak energy and its width are in a good agreement with those expected for pions produced in a nuclear medium in the framework of the Cerenkov quantum approach. The peak energy obtained is consistent with the value of the cross-section maximum observed in coincidence nucleon-nucleus interaction experiments.