Elliptic Flow Measurements with the PHENIX Detector

Two particle azimuthal correlation functions are presented for charged hadrons produced in Au+Au collisions at RHIC ($\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=130$ GeV). The measurements allow for the determination of elliptic flow without event-by-event estimation of the reaction plane. The measured correlation functions indicate elliptic flow values ($v_2$) which show significant sensitivity to both the collision centrality and the transverse momenta of emitted hadrons.Comment: Contribution to Quark Matter 2001, Long Island, New York, January 15-20, 200

Influence of finite volume and magnetic field effects on the QCD phase diagram

The Polyakov linear sigma model (PLSM) is used to investigate the respective influence of a finite volume and a magnetic field on the quark-hadron phase boundary in the plane of baryon chemical potential ($\mu_{B}$) vs. temperature ($T$) of the QCD phase diagram. The calculated results indicate sizable shifts of the quark-hadron phase boundary to lower values of $(\mu_{B}~\text{and}~T)$ for increasing magnetic field strength, and an opposite shift to higher values of $(\mu_{B}~\text{and}~T)$ for decreasing system volume. Such shifts could have important implications for extraction of the thermodynamic properties of the QCD phase diagram from heavy ion data