Rescuing the nonjet (NJ) azimuth quadrupole from the flow narrative
Abstract
According to the flow narrative commonly applied to high-energy nuclear collisions a cylindrical-quadrupole component of 1D azimuth angular correlations is conventionally denoted by quantity and interpreted to represent elliptic flow. Jet angular correlations may also contribute to data as "nonflow" depending on the method used to calculate , but 2D graphical methods are available to insure accurate separation. The nonjet (NJ) quadrupole has various properties inconsistent with a flow interpretation, including the observation that NJ quadrupole centrality variation in A-A collisions has no relation to strongly-varying jet modification ("jet quenching") in those collisions commonly attributed to jet interaction with a flowing dense medium. In this presentation I describe isolation of quadrupole spectra from pt-differential data from the RHIC and LHC. I demonstrate that quadrupole spectra have characteristics very different from the single-particle spectra for most hadrons, that quadrupole spectra indicate a common boosted hadron source for a small minority of hadrons that "carry" the NJ quadrupole structure, that the narrow source-boost distribution is characteristic of an expanding thin cylindrical shell (strongly contradicting hydro descriptions), and that in the boost frame a single universal quadrupole spectrum (L\'evy distribution) on transverse mass accurately describes data for several hadron species scaled according to their statistical-model abundances. The quadrupole spectrum shape changes very little from RHIC to LHC energies. Taken in combination those characteristics strongly suggest a unique {\em nonflow} (and nonjet) QCD mechanism for the NJ quadrupole conventionally represented by .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1609.07693,
title = {Rescuing the nonjet (NJ) azimuth quadrupole from the flow narrative},
author = {Thomas A. Trainor},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.07693},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
6 pages, 6 figures, to appear in proceedings of the XLVI International Symposium on Multiparticle Dynamics