No Arabic abstract
Measurements of anisotropic flow Fourier coefficients ($v_n$) for inclusive charged particles and identified hadrons $pi^{pm}$, $K^{pm}$, $p$, and $bar{p}$ produced at midrapidity in Cu+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=200$ GeV are presented. The data were collected in 2012 by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The particle azimuthal distributions with respect to different order symmetry planes $Psi_n$, for $n$~=~1, 2, and 3 are studied as a function of transverse momentum $p_T$ over a broad range of collisions centralities. Mass ordering, as expected from hydrodynamic flow, is observed for all three harmonics. The charged-particle results are compared to hydrodynamical and transport model calculations. We also compare these Cu$+$Au results with those in Cu$+$Cu and Au$+$Au collisions at the same $sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$, and find that the $v_2$ and $v_3$, as a function of transverse momentum, follow a common scaling with $1/(varepsilon_n N_{rm part}^{1/3})$.
We present the first measurement of charge-dependent directed flow in Cu+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$ = 200 GeV. The results are presented as a function of the particle transverse momentum and pseudorapidity for different centralities. A finite difference between the directed flow of positive and negative charged particles is observed that qualitatively agrees with the expectations from the effects of the initial strong electric field between two colliding ions with different nuclear charges. The measured difference in directed flow is much smaller than that obtained from the parton-hadron-string-dynamics (PHSD) model, which suggests that most of the electric charges, i.e. quarks and antiquarks, have not yet been created during the lifetime of the strong electric field, which is of the order of, or less than, 1fm/$c$.
We present the first measurement of elliptic ($v_2$) and triangular ($v_3$) flow in high-multiplicity $^{3}$He$+$Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=200$ GeV. Two-particle correlations, where the particles have a large separation in pseudorapidity, are compared in $^{3}$He$+$Au and in $p$$+$$p$ collisions and indicate that collective effects dominate the second and third Fourier components for the correlations observed in the $^{3}$He$+$Au system. The collective behavior is quantified in terms of elliptic $v_2$ and triangular $v_3$ anisotropy coefficients measured with respect to their corresponding event planes. The $v_2$ values are comparable to those previously measured in $d$$+$Au collisions at the same nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy. Comparison with various theoretical predictions are made, including to models where the hot spots created by the impact of the three $^{3}$He nucleons on the Au nucleus expand hydrodynamically to generate the triangular flow. The agreement of these models with data may indicate the formation of low-viscosity quark-gluon plasma even in these small collision systems.
We report new STAR measurements of mid-rapidity yields for the $Lambda$, $bar{Lambda}$, $K^{0}_{S}$, $Xi^{-}$, $bar{Xi}^{+}$, $Omega^{-}$, $bar{Omega}^{+}$ particles in Cu+Cu collisions at sNN{200}, and mid-rapidity yields for the $Lambda$, $bar{Lambda}$, $K^{0}_{S}$ particles in Au+Au at sNN{200}. We show that at a given number of participating nucleons, the production of strange hadrons is higher in Cu+Cu collisions than in Au+Au collisions at the same center-of-mass energy. We find that aspects of the enhancement factors for all particles can be described by a parameterization based on the fraction of participants that undergo multiple collisions.
The azimuthal anisotropic flow of identified and unidentified charged particles has been systematically studied in Cu+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$ = 200 GeV for harmonics $n=$ 1-4 in the pseudorapidity range $|eta|<1$. The directed flow in Cu+Au collisions is compared with the rapidity-odd and, for the first time, the rapidity-even components of charged particle directed flow in Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$ = 200~GeV. The slope of the directed flow pseudorapidity dependence in Cu+Au collisions is found to be similar to that in Au+Au collisions, with the intercept shifted toward positive $eta$ values, i.e., the Cu-going direction. The mean transverse momentum projected onto the spectator plane, $langle p_xrangle$, in Cu+Au collision also exhibits approximately linear dependence on $eta$ with the intercept at about $etaapprox-0.4$, closer to the rapidity of the Cu+Au system center-of-mass. The observed dependencies find natural explanation in a picture of the directed flow originating partly due the tilted source and partly due to the rapidity dependent asymmetry in the initial density distribution. Charge-dependence of the $langle p_xrangle$ was also observed in Cu+Au collisions, indicating an effect of the initial electric field created by charge difference of the spectator protons in two colliding nuclei. The rapidity-even component of directed flow in Au+Au collisions is close to that in Pb+Pb collisions at $sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$ = 2.76 TeV, indicating a similar magnitude of dipole-like fluctuations in the initial-state density distribution. Higher harmonic flow in Cu+Au collisions exhibits similar trends to those observed in Au+Au and Pb+Pb collisions and is qualitatively reproduced by a viscous hydrodynamic model and a multi-phase transport model. For all harmonics with $nge2$ we observe an approximate scaling of $v_n$ with the number of constituent quarks.
This paper reports results for directed flow $v_{1}$ and elliptic flow $v_{2}$ of charged particles in Cu+Cu collisions at $sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 22.4 GeV at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The measurements are for the 0-60% most central collisions, using charged particles observed in the STAR detector. Our measurements extend to 22.4 GeV Cu+Cu collisions the prior observation that $v_1$ is independent of the system size at 62.4 and 200 GeV, and also extend the scaling of $v_1$ with $eta/y_{rm beam}$ to this system. The measured $v_2(p_T)$ in Cu+Cu collisions is similar for $sqrt{s_{NN}} = 22.4-200$ GeV. We also report a comparison with results from transport model (UrQMD and AMPT) calculations. The model results do not agree quantitatively with the measured $v_1(eta), v_2(p_T)$ and $v_2(eta)$.