No Arabic abstract
We report the measurement of cumulants ($C_n, n=1ldots4$) of the net-charge distributions measured within pseudorapidity ($|eta|<0.35$) in Au$+$Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=7.7-200$ GeV with the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The ratios of cumulants (e.g. $C_1/C_2$, $C_3/C_1$) of the net-charge distributions, which can be related to volume independent susceptibility ratios, are studied as a function of centrality and energy. These quantities are important to understand the quantum-chromodynamics phase diagram and possible existence of a critical end point. The measured values are very well described by expectation from negative binomial distributions. We do not observe any nonmonotonic behavior in the ratios of the cumulants as a function of collision energy. The measured values of $C_1/C_2 = mu/sigma^2$ and $C_3/C_1 = Ssigma^3/mu$ can be directly compared to lattice quantum-chromodynamics calculations and thus allow extraction of both the chemical freeze-out temperature and the baryon chemical potential at each center-of-mass energy.
We present data on long-range multiplicity correlations in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions at the top RHIC energy ($sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV) from the STAR experiment. The data shows a long-range multiplicity correlation extending across a gap of 1.6 units in pseudorapidity. The data is over predicted by a multiparticle production model with hadronization of independent strings, or fusion of two color strings. This can be interpreted in terms of additional dynamical reduction in the number of particle sources.
We present measurements of $e^+e^-$ production at midrapidity in Au$+$Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$ = 200 GeV. The invariant yield is studied within the PHENIX detector acceptance over a wide range of mass ($m_{ee} <$ 5 GeV/$c^2$) and pair transverse momentum ($p_T$ $<$ 5 GeV/$c$), for minimum bias and for five centrality classes. The ee yield is compared to the expectations from known sources. In the low-mass region ($m_{ee}=0.30$--0.76 GeV/$c^2$) there is an enhancement that increases with centrality and is distributed over the entire pair pt range measured. It is significantly smaller than previously reported by the PHENIX experiment and amounts to $2.3pm0.4({rm stat})pm0.4({rm syst})pm0.2^{rm model}$ or to $1.7pm0.3({rm stat})pm0.3({rm syst})pm0.2^{rm model}$ for minimum bias collisions when the open-heavy-flavor contribution is calculated with {sc pythia} or {sc mc@nlo}, respectively. The inclusive mass and $p_T$ distributions as well as the centrality dependence are well reproduced by model calculations where the enhancement mainly originates from the melting of the $rho$ meson resonance as the system approaches chiral symmetry restoration. In the intermediate-mass region ($m_{ee}$ = 1.2--2.8 GeV/$c^2$), the data hint at a significant contribution in addition to the yield from the semileptonic decays of heavy-flavor mesons.
We report preliminary results of hypertriton observation in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC. We have identified 157 +- 30 candidates in the current sample containing ~10^8 Au+Au events at sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 GeV. The production rate of hypertriton is close to that of helium 3. No extra penalty factor is observed for hypertriton, in contrast to results observed at the AGS.
According to first principle Lattice QCD calculations, the transition from quark-gluon plasma to hadronic matter is a smooth crossover in the region $mu_{rm B}leq T_{c}$. As a result, higher-order cumulants and their ratios are predicted to be negative, $C_{6}/C_{2}<0$, for example. In this paper, we report the first measurement of the midrapidity net-proton $C_{6}/C_{2}$ from 27, 54.4 and 200 GeV Au+Au collisions at RHIC. The dependence on collision centrality and kinematic acceptance in ($p_{T}$, $y$) are analyzed. While for 27 and 54.4 GeV collisions the $C_{6}/C_{2}$ values are close to zero within uncertainties, it is observed that for 200 GeV collisions, the $C_{6}/C_{2}$ ratio becomes progressively negative from peripheral to central collisions. Transport model calculations without critical dynamics predict values around zero. These observations seem to favor a smooth crossover in the high energy nuclear collisions at RHIC.
Measurements of the elliptic flow, $v_{2}$, of identified hadrons ($pi^{pm}$, $K^{pm}$, $K_{s}^{0}$, $p$, $bar{p}$, $phi$, $Lambda$, $bar{Lambda}$, $Xi^{-}$, $bar{Xi}^{+}$, $Omega^{-}$, $bar{Omega}^{+}$) in Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 7.7, 11.5, 19.6, 27, 39 and 62.4 GeV are presented. The measurements were done at mid-rapidity using the Time Projection Chamber and the Time-of-Flight detectors of the STAR experiment during the Beam Energy Scan program at RHIC. A significant difference in the $v_{2}$ values for particles and the corresponding anti-particles was observed at all transverse momenta for the first time. The difference increases with decreasing center-of-mass energy, $sqrt{s_{NN}}$ (or increasing baryon chemical potential, $mu_{B}$) and is larger for the baryons as compared to the mesons. This implies that particles and anti-particles are no longer consistent with the universal number-of-constituent quark (NCQ) scaling of $v_{2}$ that was observed at $sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 200 GeV. However, for the group of particles NCQ scaling at $(m_{T}-m_{0})/n_{q}>$ 0.4 GeV/$c^{2}$ is not violated within $pm$10%. The $v_{2}$ values for $phi$ mesons at 7.7 and 11.5 GeV are approximately two standard deviations from the trend defined by the other hadrons at the highest measured $p_{T}$ values.