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The centrality determination for Au + Au collisions at 1.23A GeV, as measured with HADES at the GSI-SIS18, is described. In order to extract collision geometry related quantities, such as the average impact parameter or number of participating nucleons, a Glauber Monte Carlo approach is employed. For the application of this model to collisions at this relatively low centre-of-mass energy of √ s NN = 2.42 GeV special investigations were performed. As a result a well defined procedure to determine centrality classes for ongoing analyses of heavy-ion data is established.

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We present high-statistic data on charged-pion emission from Au + Au collisions at $$\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 2.4~\hbox {GeV}$$ s NN = 2.4 GeV (corresponding to $$E_{beam} = 1.23~\hbox {A GeV}$$ E beam = 1.23 A GeV ) in four centrality classes in the range 0–40% of the most central collisions. The data are analyzed as a function of transverse momentum, transverse mass, rapidity, and polar angle. Pion multiplicity per participating nucleon decreases moderately with increasing centrality. The polar angular distributions are found to be non-isotropic even for the most central event class. Our results on pion multiplicity fit well into the general trend of the available world data, but undershoot by $$2.5~\sigma $$ 2.5 σ data from the FOPI experiment measured at slightly lower beam energy. We compare our data to state-of-the-art transport model calculations (PHSD, IQMD, PHQMD, GiBUU and SMASH) and find substantial differences between the measurement and the results of these calculations.