English

Rescuing the nonjet (NJ) azimuth quadrupole from the flow narrative

Nuclear Theory 2017-04-26 v1 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

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 v2v_2 and interpreted to represent elliptic flow. Jet angular correlations may also contribute to v2v_2 data as "nonflow" depending on the method used to calculate v2v_2, 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 v2(pt)v_2(p_t) 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 mtm_t 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 v2v_2.

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