Overview of Results from NA61/SHINE: Uncovering Critical Structures

NA61/SHINE is a multi-purpose experiment to study hadron–proton, hadron–nucleus and nucleus–nucleus collisions at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron. The experiment performs unique measurements for physics of strong interactions as well as important reference measurements for neutrino and cosmic-ray physics. The results from the strong interaction programme uncover rapid changes in collision-energy and system-size dependence of basic hadron production properties—the critical structures. They are attributed to the onset of deconfinement, onset of fireball and may indicate the critical point of strongly interacting matter.