In-medium reduction of the \eta' mass in \sqrt{s_NN} = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions

Understand

A reduction of the mass of the \eta'(958) meson may indicate the restoration of the UA(1) symmetry in a hot and dense hadronic matter, corresponding to the return of the 9th, "prodigal" Goldstone boson.

• We report on an analysis of a combined PHENIX and STAR data set on the intercept parameter of the two-pion Bose-Einstein correlation functions, as measuremed in \sqrt{s_NN} = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions at RHIC.
• To describe this combined PHENIX and STAR dataset, an in-medium \eta' mass reduction of at least 200 MeV is needed, at the 99.9 % confidence level in a broad model class of resonance multiplicities.
• Energy, system size and centrality dependence of the observed effect is also discussed.