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.
Anisotropies in the initial energy density distribution of the quark-gluon plasma created in high energy heavy ion collisions lead to anisotropies in the azimuthal distributions of the final-state particles known as collective flow. Fourier harmonic decomposition is used to quantify these anisotropies. The higher-order harmonics can be induced by the same order anisotropies (linear response) or by the combined influence of several lower order anisotropies (nonlinear response) in the initial state. The mixed higher-order anisotropic flow and nonlinear response coefficients of charged particles are measured as functions of transverse momentum and centrality in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energies $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} =$ 2.76 and 5.02 TeV with the CMS detector. The results are compared with viscous hydrodynamic calculations using several different initial conditions, as well as microscopic transport model calculations. None of the models provides a simultaneous description of the mixed higher-order flow harmonics and nonlinear response coefficients.
The second-order azimuthal anisotropy Fourier harmonics, v2, are obtained in pPb and PbPb collisions over a wide pseudorapidity (eta) range based on correlations among six or more charged particles. The pPb data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35 inverse nanobarns, were collected during the 2013 LHC pPb run at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV by the CMS experiment. A sample of semi-peripheral PbPb collision data at sqrt(s[NN])= 2.76 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.5 inverse microbarns and covering a similar range of particle multiplicities as the pPb data, is also analyzed for comparison. The six- and eight-particle cumulant and the Lee-Yang zeros methods are used to extract the v2 coefficients, extending previous studies of two- and four-particle correlations. For both the pPb and PbPb systems, the v2 values obtained with correlations among more than four particles are consistent with previously published four-particle results. These data support the interpretation of a collective origin for the previously observed long-range (large Delta[eta]) correlations in both systems. The ratios of v2 values corresponding to correlations including different numbers of particles are compared to theoretical predictions that assume a hydrodynamic behavior of a pPb system dominated by fluctuations in the positions of participant nucleons. These results provide new insights into the multi-particle dynamics of collision systems with a very small overlapping region.
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