Centrality dependence of the high pT charged hadron suppression in Au+Au collisions at sNN=130 GeV

PHENIX has measured the centrality dependence of charged hadron pT spectra from Au+Au collisions at sNN=130 GeV. The truncated mean pT decreases with centrality for pT>2 GeV/c, indicating an apparent reduction of the contribution from hard scattering to high pT hadron production. For central collisions the yield at high pT is shown to be suppressed compared to binary nucleon–nucleon collision scaling of p+p data. This suppression is monotonically increasing with centrality, but most of the change occurs below 30% centrality, i.e., for collisions with less than ∼140 participating nucleons. The observed pT and centrality dependence is consistent with the particle production predicted by models including hard scattering and subsequent energy loss of the scattered partons in the dense matter created in the collisions.