Centrality Determination in Heavy-Ion Collisions at the NICA Energy Range

Abstract Centrality is a key parameter characterizing the geometry of relativistic heavy-ion collisions, defining the size of the interaction region and enabling comparisons with model predictions and other experimental results. The Glauber Monte Carlo (MC) method, based on charged-particle multiplicity, is reliable at high energies but, at low energies with small multiplicities, exhibits uncertainties in impact parameter estimation. In this study, we investigate both the MC-Glauber method and an alternative approach based on Bayes’ theorem for centrality determination in collisions at the NICA energy range. The procedures were performed employing charged-particle multiplicity distributions generated by state-of-the-art models of nucleus–nucleus collisions.