No Arabic abstract
The principal component analysis of flow correlations in heavy-ion collisions is studied. The correlation matrix of harmonic flow is generalized to correlations involving several different flow vectors. The method can be applied to study the nonlinear coupling between different harmonic modes in a double differential way in transverse momentum or pseudorapidity. The procedure is illustrated with results from the hydrodynamic model applied to Pb+Pb collisions at $sqrt{s}=2760$GeV. Three examples of generalized correlations matrices in transverse momentum are constructed corresponding to the coupling of $v_2^2$ and $v_4$, of $v_2v_3$ and $v_5$, or of $v_2^3$, $v_3^3$, and $v_6$. The principal component decomposition is applied to the correlation matrices and the dominant modes are calculated.
The principal component analysis (PCA), a mathematical tool commonly used in statistics, has recently been employed to interpret the $p_T$-dependent fluctuations of harmonic flow $v_n$ in terms of leading and subleading flow modes in heavy ion collisions. Using simulated data from AMPT and HIJING models, we show that the PCA modes are not fixed, but depend on the choice of the particle weight and the $p_T$ range. Furthermore, the shape of the leading mode is affected by the presence of non-flow correlations, and fake subleading mode may arise from the mixing of non-flow correlations with leading flow mode with a magnitude that could be larger than the genuine subleading flow mode. Therefore, the meaning of PCA modes and their relations to physical leading and subleading flow modes associated initial state eccentricities need to be further clarified/validated in realistic model simulations.
In this paper, we implement Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to study the single particle distributions generated from thousands of {tt VISH2+1} hydrodynamic simulations with an aim to explore if a machine could directly discover flow from the huge amount of data without explicit instructions from human-beings. We found that the obtained PCA eigenvectors are similar to but not identical with the traditional Fourier bases. Correspondingly, the PCA defined flow harmonics $v_n^prime$ are also similar to the traditional $v_n$ for $n=2$ and 3, but largely deviated from the Fourier ones for $ngeq 4$. A further study on the symmetric cumulants and the Pearson coefficients indicates that mode-coupling effects are reduced for these flow harmonics defined by PCA.
In high-energy heavy-ion collisions, structures in the initial collision zone are a matter of intense investigation, both from theory and experimental points of view. A large number of models have been developed to represent the initial state of the collision including Glauber model, Colour Glass Condensate (CGC) among others. Another important aspect of the study is to investigate proper observables that will be sensitive to the initial collision zone. In this work, we have discussed a formalism to implement the spatial clusters at the partonic level in the string melting version of the AMPT model for PbPb collisions at $sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV. These clusters are then propagated through the AMPT hadronization scheme. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has been used on the $eta$, $phi$ and $p_T$ distributions of the produced charged particles and the eigenvalues have been compared before and after the implementation of the clustering. It is found that for all these three different distributions, all the prominent PCA modes have shown sensitivity to the clustering. A centrality dependent study has also been performed on those eigenvalues.
Higher-order anisotropic flows in heavy-ion collisions are affected by nonlinear mode coupling effects. It has been suggested that the associated nonlinear hydrodynamic response coefficients probe the transport properties and are largely insensitive to the spectrum of initial density fluctuations of the medium created in these collisions. To test this suggestion, we explore nonlinear mode coupling effects in event-by-event viscous fluid dynamics, using two different models for the fluctuating initial density profiles, and compare the nonlinear coupling coefficients between the initial eccentricity vectors before hydrodynamic expansion and the final flow vectors after the expansion. For several mode coupling coefficients we find significant sensitivity to the initial fluctuation spectrum. They all exhibit strong sensitivity to the specific shear viscosity at freeze-out, but only weak dependence on the shear viscosity during hydrodynamic evolution.
We present a simple description of the energy density profile created in a nucleus-nucleus collision, motivated by high-energy QCD. The energy density is modeled as the sum of contributions coming from elementary collisions between localized charges and a smooth nucleus. Each of these interactions creates a sharply-peaked source of energy density falling off at large distances like $1/r^2$, corresponding to the two-dimensional Coulomb field of a point charge. Our model reproduces the one-point and two-point functions of the energy density field calculated in the framework of the color glass condensate effective theory, to leading logarithmic accuracy. We apply it to the description of eccentricity fluctuations. Unlike other existing models of initial conditions for heavy-ion collisions, it allows us to reproduce simultaneously the centrality dependence of elliptic and triangular flow.