Observation of the Onset of Constituent Quark Number Scaling in Heavy-Ion Collisions at RHIC

The STAR collaboration Aboona, B.E. ; Adam, J. ; Adamczyk, L. ; et al.
Phys.Rev.Lett. 135 (2025) 072301, 2025.
Inspire Record 2907591 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.159489

Partonic collectivity is one of the necessary signatures for the formation of Quark-Gluon-Plasma in high-energy nuclear collisions. Number of Constituent Quarks (NCQ) scaling has been observed for light hadron elliptic flow $v_2$ in top energy nuclear collisions at RHIC and the LHC, and this has been theoretically suggested as strong evidence for partonic collectivity. In this letter, a systematic analysis of $v_2$ of $\pi^{\pm}$, $K^{\pm}$, $K^{0}_{S}$, $p$ and $\Lambda$ in Au+Au collisions at ${\sqrt{s_{_{\rm{NN}}}}}$ = 3.2, 3.5, 3.9, and 4.5 GeV, with the STAR experiment at RHIC, is presented. NCQ scaling is markedly violated at 3.2 GeV, consistent with a hadronic-interaction dominated equation of state. However, as the collision energy increases, a gradual evolution to NCQ scaling is observed. This beam-energy dependence of $v_2$ for all hadrons studied provides evidence for the onset of dominant partonic interactions by ${\sqrt{s_{_{\rm{NN}}}}}$ = 4.5 GeV.

72 data tables

$p_{T}$ dependence of $v_{2}$ for $\pi^{+}$ in Au+Au collisions at 3 GeV

$p_{T}$ dependence of $v_{2}$ for $\pi^{+}$ in Au+Au collisions at 3.2 GeV

$p_{T}$ dependence of $v_{2}$ for $\pi^{+}$ in Au+Au collisions at 3.5 GeV

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Elliptic flow in Au + Au collisions at s(N N)**(1/2) = 130-GeV.

The STAR collaboration Ackermann, K.H. ; Adams, N. ; Adler, C. ; et al.
Phys.Rev.Lett. 86 (2001) 402-407, 2001.
Inspire Record 533414 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.93232

Elliptic flow from nuclear collisions is a hadronic observable sensitive to the early stages of system evolution. We report first results on elliptic flow of charged particles at midrapidity in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=130 GeV using the STAR TPC at RHIC. The elliptic flow signal, v_2, averaged over transverse momentum, reaches values of about 6% for relatively peripheral collisions and decreases for the more central collisions. This can be interpreted as the observation of a higher degree of thermalization than at lower collision energies. Pseudorapidity and transverse momentum dependence of elliptic flow are also presented.

2 data tables

Elliptic flow as a function of centrality defined as nch/nmax. Also given is epsilon, the initial space eccentricity of the overlap region, as well as the cumulative fraction of events starting with the most central. From the results of the study of non-flow contributions by different subevent selections and the maximum magnitudes of the first and higher-order harmonics, we estimate a systematic error for v2 of about 0.007, with somewhat smaller uncertainty for the mid-centralities where the resolution of the event plane is high.

Elliptic flow as a function of transverse momen-tum for minimum bias events