Probing Pb+Pb collisions at SNN=2760\sqrt{S_{NN}}=2760 GeV with spectators

There is event by event geometric as well as quantum fluctuations in the initial condition of heavy-ion collisions. The standard technique of analysing heavy-ion collisions in bins of centrality obtained from final state multiplicity averages out the various initial configurations and thus restricts the study to only a limited range of initial conditions. In this paper, we propose an additional binning in terms of total spectator neutrons in an event. This offers us a key control parameter to probe events with broader range of initial conditions providing us an opportunity to peep into events with rarer initial conditions which otherwise get masked when analysed by centrality binning alone. We find that the inclusion of spectator binning allows one to vary $\varepsilon_2$ and $\varepsilon_3$ independently. We observe that the standard scaling relation between $\displaystyle{v_2/\varepsilon_2}$ and $\frac{1}{S}\frac{dN_{\text{ch}}}{d\eta}$ exhibited by centrality bins is broken by the spectator neutron bins. However, the acoustic scaling relation between $\displaystyle{\ln\left( v_n/\varepsilon_n\right)}$ and transverse system size holds for both centrality as well as spectator bins for central to mid-central collisions. The introduction of the spectator binning allows us to tune over a wide range viscosity driven effects for events with varying initial states but similar final state multiplicity.Comment: version accepted for publication to Physics Letters

A Review on ϕ

The main aim of the relativistic heavy-ion experiment is to create extremely hot and dense matter and study the QCD phase structure. With this motivation, experimental program started in the early 1990s at the Brookhaven Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) and the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) followed by Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven and recently at Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. These experiments allowed us to study the QCD matter from center-of-mass energies (sNN) 4.75 GeV to 2.76 TeV. The ϕ meson, due to its unique properties, is considered as a good probe to study the QCD matter created in relativistic collisions. In this paper we present a review on the measurements of ϕ meson production in heavy-ion experiments. Mainly, we discuss the energy dependence of ϕ meson invariant yield and the production mechanism, strangeness enhancement, parton energy loss, and partonic collectivity in nucleus-nucleus collisions. Effect of later stage hadronic rescattering on elliptic flow (v2) of proton is also discussed relative to corresponding effect on ϕ meson v2

Azimuthal anisotropy of strange hadrons in U+U collisions at √S

We present the measurement of the azimuthal anisotropy of strange hadrons (K0s, ϕ and Λ) at mid-rapidity (|y| < 1.0) in U+U collisions at SNN = 193 GeV using the STAR detector at RHIC. We present the centrality and transverse momentum dependence of flow coefficients υn for n = 2, 3, 4. A strong centrality dependence of υ2 is observed for the particles K0s, ϕ and Λ in U+U collisions at SNN = 193 GeV similar to Au+Au collisions at SNN = 200 GeV. We studied the number of constituent quark scaling (NCQ) of the flow coefficients. The NCQ scaling of the flow coefficients holds within uncertainties for the particles studied in the U+U collisions. We also present the comparison of the results to the AMPT transport model

An improved method to access initial states in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Observables in heavy-ion collisions are generally categorized into centralities, which reflect an average over events within a range of impact parameters including a wide variety of initial-state configurations. A multiple binning method using spectator neutrons within each centrality has been shown to provide access to events with rare initial-state conditions. This work suggests an improvement in quantifying the difference between standard centrality and spectator neutron binning towards accessing the initial-state properties. A selection of events with higher initial-state density at a fixed participating nucleon number was observed to result in larger final-state particle production and smaller elliptic flow. The relative difference between observables in centrality and spectator binning shows reduced sensitivity for the observables dominated by impact parameter fluctuations in the initial state, such as triangular flow. This property renders the spectator binning method a good candidate for separating geometric contributions from random fluctuations in the initial state towards final-state observables