PHENIX has measured the centrality dependence of charged hadron p_T spectra from central Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=130 GeV. The truncated mean p_T decreases with centrality for p_T > 2 GeV/c, indicating an apparent reduction of the contribution from hard scattering to high p_T hadron production. For central collisions the yield at high p_T is shown to be suppressed compared to binary nucleon-nucleon collision scaling of p+p data. This suppression is monotonically increasing with centrality, but most of the change occurs below 30% centrality, i.e. for collisions with less than about 140 participating nucleons. The observed p_T and centrality dependence is consistent with the particle production predicted by models including hard scattering and subsequent energy loss of the scattered partons in the dense matter created in the collisions.

The invariant differential cross section for inclusive electron production in $p + p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 200$~GeV has been measured by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider over the transverse momentum range $0.4 \le p_T \le 5.0$~GeV/$c$ in the central rapidity region ($|\eta| \le 0.35$). The contribution to the inclusive electron spectrum from semileptonic decays of hadrons carrying heavy flavor, {\it i.e.} charm quarks or, at high $p_T$, bottom quarks, is determined via three independent methods. The resulting electron spectrum from heavy flavor decays is compared to recent leading and next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations. The total cross section of charm quark-antiquark pair production is determined to be $\sigma_{c\bar{c}} = 0.92 \pm 0.15 {\rm (stat.)} \pm 0.54 {\rm (sys.)}$~mb.

Dihadron correlations at high transverse momentum in d+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV at midrapidity are measured by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). From these correlations we extract several structural characteristics of jets; the root-mean-squared (RMS) transverse momentum of fragmenting hadrons with respect to the jet sqrt(<j_T^2>), the mean sine-squared angle between the scattered partons <sin^2(phi_jj)>, and the number of particles produced within the dijet that are associated with a high-p_T particle (dN/dx_E distributions). We observe that the fragmentation characteristics of jets in d+Au collisions are very similar to those in p+p collisions and that there is also little dependence on the centrality of the d+Au collision. This is consistent with the nuclear medium having little influence on the fragmentation process. Furthermore, there is no statistically significant increase in the value of <sin^2(phi_jj)> from p+p to d+Au collisions. This constrains the amount of multiple scattering that partons undergo in the cold nuclear medium before and after a hard-collision.

The PHENIX experiment at RHIC has measured charged hadron yields at mid-rapidity over a wide range of transverse momentum (0.5 < p_T < 10 GeV/c) in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV. The data are compared to pi^zero measurements from the same experiment. For both charged hadrons and neutral pions, the yields per nucleon-nucleon collision are significantly suppressed in central compared to peripheral and nucleon-nucleon collisions. The suppression sets in gradually and increases with increasing centrality of the collisions. Above 4-5 GeV/c in p_T, a constant and almost identical suppression of charged hadrons and pi^zeroes is observed. The p_T spectra are compared to published spectra from Au+Au at sqrt(s_NN)=130 in terms of x_t scaling. Central and peripheral pi^zero as well as peripheral charged spectra exhibit the same x_t scaling as observed in p+p data.

Two particle azimuthal correlation functions are presented for charged hadrons produced in Au + Au collisions at RHIC sqrt(s_NN) = 130 GeV. The measurements permit determination of elliptic flow without event-by-event estimation of the reaction plane. The extracted elliptic flow values v_2 show significant sensitivity to both the collision centrality and the transverse momenta of emitted hadrons, suggesting rapid thermalization and relatively strong velocity fields. When scaled by the eccentricity of the collision zone, epsilon, the scaled elliptic flow shows little or no dependence on centrality for charged hadrons with relatively low p_T. A breakdown of this epsilon scaling is observed for charged hadrons with p_T > 1.0 GeV/c for the most central collisions.

Two-pion correlations in sqrt(s_NN)=130 GeV Au+Au collisions at RHIC have been measured over a broad range of pair transverse momentum k_T by the PHENIX experiment at RHIC. The k_T dependent transverse radii are similar to results from heavy ion collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 4.1, 4.9, and 17.3 GeV, whereas the longitudinal radius increases monotonically with beam energy. The ratio of the outwards to sidewards transverse radii (R_out/R_side) is consistent with unity and independent of k_T.

A comprehensive survey of event-by-event fluctuations of charged hadron multiplicity in relativistic heavy ions is presented. The survey covers Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 62.4 and 200 GeV, and Cu+Cu collisions sqrt(s_NN) = 22.5, 62.4, and 200 GeV. Fluctuations are measured as a function of collision centrality, transverse momentum range, and charge sign. After correcting for non-dynamical fluctuations due to fluctuations in the collision geometry within a centrality bin, the remaining dynamical fluctuations expressed as the variance normalized by the mean tend to decrease with increasing centrality. The dynamical fluctuations are consistent with or below the expectation from a superposition of participant nucleon-nucleon collisions based upon p+p data, indicating that this dataset does not exhibit evidence of critical behavior in terms of the compressibility of the system. An analysis of Negative Binomial Distribution fits to the multiplicity distributions demonstrates that the heavy ion data exhibit weak clustering properties.

Transverse momentum spectra for charged hadrons and for neutral pions in the range 1 GeV/c $< p_T <$ 5 GeV/c have been measured by the PHENIX experiment at RHIC in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=130$ GeV. At high $p_T$ the spectra from peripheral nuclear collisions are consistent with the naive expectation of scaling the spectra from p+p collisions by the average number of binary nucleon- nucleon collisions. The spectra from central collisions are significantly suppressed when compared to the binary- scaled p+p expectation, and also when compared to similarly binary-scaled peripheral collisions, indicating a novel nuclear effect in central nuclear collisions at RHIC energies.

PHENIX has measured the centrality dependence of mid-rapidity pion, kaon and proton transverse momentum distributions in d+Au and p+p collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. The p+p data provide a reference for nuclear effects in d+Au and previously measured Au+Au collisions. Hadron production is enhanced in d+Au, relative to independent nucleon-nucleon scattering, as was observed in lower energy collisions. The nuclear modification factor for (anti) protons is larger than that for pions. The difference increases with centrality, but is not sufficient to account for the abundance of baryon production observed in central Au+Au collisions at RHIC. The centrality dependence in d+Au shows that the nuclear modification factor increases gradually with the number of collisions suffered by each participant nucleon. We also present comparisons with lower energy data as well as with parton recombination and other theoretical models of nuclear effects on particle production.

The energy deposited at very forward rapidities (very forward energy) is a powerful tool for characterising proton fragmentation in pp and p$-$Pb collisions. The correlation of very forward energy with particle production at midrapidity provides direct insights into the initial stages and the subsequent evolution of the collision. Furthermore, the correlation with the production of particles with large transverse momenta at midrapidity provides information complementary to the measurements of the underlying event, which are usually interpreted in the framework of models implementing centrality-dependent multiple parton interactions. Results about very forward energy, measured by the ALICE zero degree calorimeters (ZDCs), and its dependence on the activity measured at midrapidity in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV and in p$-$Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}}=8.16$ TeV are discussed. The measurements performed in pp collisions are compared with the expectations of three hadronic interaction event generators: PYTHIA 6 (Perugia 2011 tune), PYTHIA 8 (Monash tune), and EPOS LHC. These results provide new constraints on the validity of models in describing the beam remnants at very forward rapidities, where perturbative QCD cannot be used.