Flow Measurements via Two-particle Azimuthal Correlations in Au + Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 130 GeV

2002/04/11 by K. Adcox, PHENIX Collaboration · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #nucl-ex

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.89.212301

published as Phys.Rev.Lett.89:212301,2002 · 6 pages, RevTeX 3, 4 figures, 307 authors, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. on 11 April 2002. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (will be made) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/phenix/WWW/run/phenix/papers.html

Abstract

Two particle azimuthal correlation functions are presented for charged hadrons produced in Au + Au collisions at RHIC sqrt(s_NN) = 130 GeV. The measurements permit determination of elliptic flow without event-by-event estimation of the reaction plane. The extracted elliptic flow values v₂ show significant sensitivity to both the collision centrality and the transverse momenta of emitted hadrons, suggesting rapid thermalization and relatively strong velocity fields. When scaled by the eccentricity of the collision zone, epsilon, the scaled elliptic flow shows little or no dependence on centrality for charged hadrons with relatively low p_T. A breakdown of this epsilon scaling is observed for charged hadrons with p_T > 1.0 GeV/c for the most central collisions.

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