Measurements of neutral pion production at midrapidity in sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions as a function of transverse momentum, p_T, collision centrality, and angle with respect to reaction plane are presented. The data represent the final pi^0 results from the PHENIX experiment for the first RHIC Au+Au run at design center-of-mass-energy. They include additional data obtained using the PHENIX Level-2 trigger with more than a factor of three increase in statistics over previously published results for p_T > 6 GeV/c. We evaluate the suppression in the yield of high-p_T pi^0's relative to point-like scaling expectations using the nuclear modification factor R_AA. We present the p_T dependence of R_AA for nine bins in collision centrality. We separately integrate R_AA over larger p_T bins to show more precisely the centrality dependence of the high-p_T suppression. We then evaluate the dependence of the high-p_T suppression on the emission angle \Delta\phi of the pions with respect to event reaction plane for 7 bins in collision centrality. We show that the yields of high-p_T pi^0's vary strongly with \Delta\phi, consistent with prior measurements. We show that this variation persists in the most peripheral bin accessible in this analysis. For the peripheral bins we observe no suppression for neutral pions produced aligned with the reaction plane while the yield of pi^0's produced perpendicular to the reaction plane is suppressed by more than a factor of 2. We analyze the combined centrality and \Delta\phi dependence of the pi^0 suppression in different p_T bins using different possible descriptions of parton energy loss dependence on jet path-length averages to determine whether a single geometric picture can explain the observed suppression pattern.
The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has performed systematic measurements of phi meson production in the K+K- decay channel at midrapidity in p+p, d+Au, Cu+Cu and Au+Au collisions at sqrt(S_NN)=200 GeV. Results are presented on the phi invariant yield and the nuclear modification factor R_AA for Au+Au and Cu+Cu, and R_dA for d+Au collisions, studied as a function of transverse momentum (1<p_T<7 GeV/c) and centrality. In central and mid-central Au+Au collisions, the R_AA of phi exhibits a suppression relative to expectations from binary scaled p+p results. The amount of suppression is smaller than that of the neutral pion and the eta meson in the intermediate p_T range (2--5 GeV/c); whereas at higher p_T the phi, pi^0, and eta show similar suppression. The baryon (protons and anti-protons) excess observed in central Au+Au collisions at intermediate p_T is not observed for the phi meson despite the similar mass of the proton and the phi. This suggests that the excess is linked to the number of constituent quarks rather than the hadron mass. The difference gradually disappears with decreasing centrality and for peripheral collisions the R_AA values for both particles are consistent with binary scaling. Cu+Cu collisions show the same yield and suppression as Au+Au collisions for the same number of N_part. The R_dA of phi shows no evidence for cold nuclear effects within uncertainties.
The cross section for the process e+e- --> omega pi0 --> pi0 pi0 gamma has been measured in the energy range 1.05--2.00 GeV. The experiment has been performed at the e+e- collider VEPP-2000 with the SND detector. The measured e+e- --> omega pi0 cross section above 1.4 GeV is the most accurate to date. Below 1.4 GeV our data are in good agreement with the previous SND and CMD-2 measurements. Data on the e+e- --> omega pi0 cross section are well described by the VMD model with two excited rho-like states. From the measured cross section we have extracted the gamma^* --> omega pi0 transition form factor. It has been found that the VDM model cannot describe simultaneously our data and data obtained from the omega --> pi0 mu+ mu- decay. We have also tested CVC hypothesis comparing our results on the e+e- --> omega pi0 cross section with data on the tau- --> omega pi- nu_{tau} decay.
We report $e^\pm-\mu^\mp$ pair yield from charm decay measured between midrapidity electrons ($|\eta|<0.35$ and $p_T>0.5$ GeV/$c$) and forward rapidity muons ($1.4<\eta<2.1$ and $p_T>1.0$ GeV/$c$) as a function of $\Delta\phi$ in both $p$$+$$p$ and in $d$+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=200$ GeV. Comparing the $p$$+$$p$ results with several different models, we find the results are consistent with a total charm cross section $\sigma_{c\bar{c}} =$ 538 $\pm$ 46 (stat) $\pm$ 197 (data syst) $\pm$ 174 (model syst) $\mu$b. These generators also indicate that the back-to-back peak at $\Delta\phi = \pi$ is dominantly from the leading order contributions (gluon fusion), while higher order processes (flavor excitation and gluon splitting) contribute to the yield at all $\Delta\phi$. We observe a suppression in the pair yield per collision in $d$+Au. We find the pair yield suppression factor for $2.7<\Delta\phi<3.2$ rad is $J_{dA}$ = 0.433 $\pm$ 0.087 (stat) $\pm$ 0.135 (syst), indicating cold nuclear matter modification of $c\bar{c}$ pairs.
The PHENIX Collaboration has measured the ratio of the yields of $\psi(2S)$ to $\psi(1S)$ mesons produced in $p$$+$$p$, $p$$+$Al, $p$$+$Au, and $^{3}$He$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=200$ GeV over the forward and backward rapidity intervals $1.2<|y|<2.2$. We find that the ratio in $p$$+$$p$ collisions is consistent with measurements at other collision energies. In collisions with nuclei, we find that in the forward ($p$-going or $^{3}$He-going) direction, the relative yield of $\psi(2S)$ mesons to $\psi(1S)$ mesons is consistent with the value measured in \pp collisions. However, in the backward (nucleus-going) direction, the $\psi(2S)$ is preferentially suppressed by a factor of $\sim$2. This suppression is attributed in some models to breakup of the weakly-bound $\psi(2S)$ through final state interactions with comoving particles, which have a higher density in the nucleus-going direction. These breakup effects may compete with color screening in a deconfined quark-gluon plasma to produce sequential suppression of excited quarkonia states.
Dihadron and isolated direct photon-hadron angular correlations are measured in $p$$+$$p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=510$ GeV. Correlations of charged hadrons of $0.7<p_T<10$ GeV/$c$ with $\pi^0$ mesons of $4<p_T<15$ GeV/$c$ or isolated direct photons of $7<p_T<15$ GeV/$c$ are used to study nonperturbative effects generated by initial-state partonic transverse momentum and final-state transverse momentum from fragmentation. The nonperturbative behavior is characterized by measuring the out-of-plane transverse momentum component $p_{\rm out}$ perpendicular to the axis of the trigger particle, which is the high-$p_T$ direct photon or $\pi^0$. Nonperturbative evolution effects are extracted from Gaussian fits to the away-side inclusive-charged-hadron yields for different trigger-particle transverse momenta ($p_T^{\rm trig}$). The Gaussian widths and root mean square of $p_{\rm out}$ are reported as a function of the interaction hard scale $p_T^{\rm trig}$ to investigate possible transverse-momentum-dependent evolution differences between the $\pi^0$-h$^\pm$ and direct photon-h$^\pm$ correlations and factorization breaking effects. The widths are found to decrease with $p_T^{\rm trig}$, which indicates that the Collins-Soper-Sterman soft factor is not driving the evolution with the hard scale in nearly back-to-back dihadron and direct photon-hadron production in $p$$+$$p$ collisions. This behavior is in contrast to Drell-Yan and semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering measurements.
Longitudinal density correlations of produced matter in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV have been measured from the inclusive charged particle distributions as a function of pseudorapidity window sizes. The extracted \alpha \xi parameter, related to the susceptibility of the density fluctuations in the long wavelength limit, exhibits a non-monotonic behavior as a function of the number of participant nucleons, N_part. A local maximum is seen at N_part ~ 90, with corresponding energy density based on the Bjorken picture of \epsilon_Bj \tau ~ 2.4 GeV/(fm^2 c) with a transverse area size of 60 fm^2. This behavior may suggest a critical phase boundary based on the Ginzburg-Landau framework.
The total and the differential cross-sections for the reaction e + e − → γγ ( γ ) have been measured with the DELPHI detector at LEP at centre-of-mass energies from 130 to 183 GeV for an integrated luminosity of 78.19 pb −1 . The results agree with the QED predictions. The lower limits (obtained including previously published results at the Z 0 energies) on the QED cutoff parameters are Λ + >253 GeV and Λ − >225 GeV and the lower bound on the mass of an excited electron with an effective coupling constant λ γ =1 is 231 GeV/ c 2 . All the limits are at the 95% confidence level.
We present direct photon-hadron correlations in 200 GeV/A Au+Au, d+Au, and p+p collisions, for direct photon pT from 5–12 GeV/c, collected by the PHENIX Collaboration in the years from 2006 to 2011. We observe no significant modification of jet fragmentation in d+Au collisions, indicating that cold nuclear matter effects are small or absent. Hadrons carrying a large fraction of the quark's momentum are suppressed in Au+Au compared to p+p and d+Au. As the momentum fraction decreases, the yield of hadrons in Au+Au increases to an excess over the yield in p+p collisions. The excess is at large angles and at low hadron pT and is most pronounced for hadrons associated with lower momentum direct photons. Comparison to theoretical calculations suggests that the hadron excess arises from medium response to energy deposited by jets.
Studying spin-momentum correlations in hadronic collisions offers a glimpse into a three-dimensional picture of proton structure. The transverse single-spin asymmetry for midrapidity isolated direct photons in $p^\uparrow+p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV is measured with the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Because direct photons in particular are produced from the hard scattering and do not interact via the strong force, this measurement is a clean probe of initial-state spin-momentum correlations inside the proton and is in particular sensitive to gluon interference effects within the proton. This is the first time direct photons have been used as a probe of spin-momentum correlations at RHIC. The uncertainties on the results are a fifty-fold improvement with respect to those of the one prior measurement for the same observable, from the Fermilab E704 experiment. These results constrain gluon spin-momentum correlations in transversely polarized protons.
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