The NA61/SHINE experiment at the CERN SPS is performing a uniqe study of the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter by varying collision energy and nuclear mass number of colliding nuclei. In central Pb+Pb collisions the NA49 experiment found structures in the energy dependence of several observables in the CERN SPS energy range that had been predicted for the transition to a deconfined phase. New measurements of NA61/SHINE find intriguing similarities in p+p interactions for which no deconfinement transition is expected at SPS energies. Possible implications will be discussed.
The cross sections for inclusive and Mueller-Navelet dijet production are measured as a function of the rapidity separation between the jets in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} =$ 2.76 TeV for jets with transverse momentum $p_\mathrm{T}$$\gt$ 35 GeV and rapidity $\vert y\vert$$\lt$ 4.7. Various dijet production cross section ratios are also measured. A veto on additional jets with $p_\mathrm{T}$$\gt$ 20 GeV is introduced to improve the sensitivity to the effects of the Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov (BFKL) evolution. The measurement is compared with the predictions of various Monte Carlo models based on leading-order and next-to-leading-order calculations including the Dokshitzer-Gribov-Lipatov-Altarelli-Parisi leading-logarithm (LL) parton shower as well as the LL BFKL resummation.
For the first time a principle-component analysis is used to separate out different orthogonal modes of the two-particle correlation matrix from heavy ion collisions. The analysis uses data from sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV PbPb and sqrt(s[NN]) = 5.02 TeV pPb collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. Two-particle azimuthal correlations have been extensively used to study hydrodynamic flow in heavy ion collisions. Recently it has been shown that the expected factorization of two-particle results into a product of the constituent single-particle anisotropies is broken. The new information provided by these modes may shed light on the breakdown of flow factorization in heavy ion collisions. The first two modes ("leading" and "subleading") of two-particle correlations are presented for elliptical and triangular anisotropies in PbPb and pPb collisions as a function of pt over a wide range of event activity. The leading mode is found to be essentially equivalent to the anisotropy harmonic previously extracted from two-particle correlation methods. The subleading mode represents a new experimental observable and is shown to account for a large fraction of the factorization breaking recently observed at high transverse momentum. The principle-component analysis technique has also been applied to multiplicity fluctuations. These also show a subleading mode. The connection of these new results to previous studies of factorization is discussed.
The yields and average transverse momenta of pions, kaons, and antiprotons produced at the Fermilab p¯p collider at s=300, 540, 1000, and 1800 GeV are presented and compared with data from the energies reached at the CERN collider. We also present data on the dependence of average transverse momentum 〈pt〉 and particle ratios as a function of charged particle density dNcdη; data for particle densities as high as six times the average value, corresponding to a Bjorken energy density 6 GeV/fm3, are reported. These data are relevant to the search for quark-gluon phase of QCD.
Interactions between jets and the quark-gluon plasma produced in heavy ion collisions are studied via the angular distributions of summed charged-particle transverse momenta (pt) with respect to both the leading and subleading jet axes in high-pt dijet events. The contributions of charged particles in different momentum ranges to the overall event pt balance are decomposed into short-range jet peaks and a long-range azimuthal asymmetry in charged-particle pt. The results for PbPb collisions are compared to those in pp collisions using data collected in 2011 and 2013, at collision energy sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV with integrated luminosities of 166 inverse microbarns and 5.3 inverse picobarns, respectively, by the CMS experiment at the LHC. Measurements are presented as functions of PbPb collision centrality, charged-particle pt, relative azimuth, and radial distance from the jet axis for balanced and unbalanced dijets.
The underlying event activity in proton-proton collisions at forward pseudorapidity (-6.6 < eta < -5.2) is studied with the CMS detector at the LHC, using a novel observable: the ratio of the forward energy density, dE/d(eta), for events with a charged-particle jet produced at central pseudorapidity (abs(eta[jet]) < 2) to the forward energy density for inclusive events. This forward energy density ratio is measured as a function of the central jet transverse momentum, pt, at three different pp centre-of-mass energies (sqrt(s) = 0.9, 2.76, and 7 TeV). In addition, the sqrt(s) evolution of the forward energy density is studied in inclusive events and in events with a central jet. The results are compared to those of Monte Carlo event generators for pp collisions and are discussed in terms of the underlying event. Whereas the dependence of the forward energy density ratio on jet pt at each sqrt(s) separately can be well reproduced by some models, all models fail to simultaneously describe the increase of the forward energy density with sqrt(s) in both inclusive events and in events with a central jet.
Spectra of identified charged hadrons are measured in pp collisions at the LHC for sqrt(s) = 0.9, 2.76, and 7 TeV. Charged pions, kaons, and protons in the transverse-momentum range pt approximately 0.1-1.7 GeV and for rapidities abs(y) < 1 are identified via their energy loss in the CMS silicon tracker. The average pt increases rapidly with the mass of the hadron and the event charged-particle multiplicity, independently of the center-of-mass energy. The fully corrected pt spectra and integrated yields are compared to various tunes of the PYTHIA6 and PYTHIA8 event generators.
The anisotropy of the azimuthal distributions of charged particles produced in PbPb collisions with a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is studied with the CMS experiment at the LHC. The elliptic anisotropy parameter defined as the second coefficient in a Fourier expansion of the particle invariant yields, is extracted using the event-plane method, two- and four-particle cumulants, and Lee--Yang zeros. The anisotropy is presented as a function of transverse momentum (pt), pseudorapidity (eta) over a broad kinematic range: 0.3 < pt < 20 GeV, abs(eta) < 2.4, and in 12 classes of collision centrality from 0 to 80%. The results are compared to those obtained at lower center-of-mass energies, and various scaling behaviors are examined. When scaled by the geometric eccentricity of the collision zone, the elliptic anisotropy is found to obey a universal scaling with the transverse particle density for different collision systems and center-of-mass energies.
Results on two-particle angular correlations for charged particles produced in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV are presented. The data were taken with the CMS detector at the LHC and correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 270 inverse nanobarns. The correlations are studied over a broad range of pseudorapidity (abs(eta) < 2.4) and over the full azimuth (phi) as a function of charged particle multiplicity and transverse momentum (pt). In high-multiplicity events, a long-range (abs(Delta eta) > 2.0), near-side (Delta phi approximately 0) structure emerges in the two-particle Delta eta-Delta phi correlation functions. The magnitude of the correlation exhibits a pronounced maximum in the range 1.0 < pt < 2.0 GeV/c and an approximately linear increase with the charged particle multiplicity, with an overall correlation strength similar to that found in earlier pp data at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV. The present measurement extends the study of near-side long-range correlations up to charged particle multiplicities of N[ch] approximately 180, a region so far unexplored in pp collisions. The observed long-range correlations are compared to those seen in pp, pPb, and PbPb collisions at lower collision energies.
The transverse momentum spectra of charged particles have been measured in pp and PbPb collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 2.76 TeV by the CMS experiment at the LHC. In the transverse momentum range pt = 5-10 GeV/c, the charged particle yield in the most central PbPb collisions is suppressed by up to a factor of 5 compared to the pp yield scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions. At higher pt, this suppression is significantly reduced, approaching roughly a factor of 2 for particles with pt in the range pt=40-100 GeV/c.
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