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.
Transverse momentum spectra of charged hadrons with p_T < 8 GeV/c and neutral pions with p_T < 10 GeV/c have been measured at mid-rapidity by the PHENIX experiment at RHIC in d+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. The measured yields are compared to those in p+p collisions at the same sqrt(s_NN) scaled up by the number of underlying nucleon-nucleon collisions in d+Au. The yield ratio does not show the suppression observed in central Au+Au collisions at RHIC. Instead, there is a small enhancement in the yield of high momentum particles.
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The first measurements of light antinucleus production in Au+Au collisions at RHIC are reported. The observed production rates for antideuterons and antihelions are much larger than in lower energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. A coalescence model analysis of the yields indicates that there is little or no increase in the antinucleon freeze-out volume compared to collisions at SPS energy. These analyses also indicate that the antihelion freeze-out volume is smaller than the antideuteron freeze-out volume.
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We report on two-particle azimuthal angle correlations between charged hadrons at forward/backward (deuteron/gold going direction) rapidity and charged hadrons at mid-rapidity in deuteron-gold (d+Au) and proton-proton (p+p) collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. Jet structures are observed in the correlations which we quantify in terms of the conditional yield and angular width of away side partners. The kinematic region studied here samples partons in the gold nucleus carrying nucleon momentum fraction x~0.1 to x~0.01. Within this range, we find no x dependence of the jet structure in d+Au collisions.
Results on high transverse momentum charged particle emission with respect to the reaction plane are presented for Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$= 200 GeV. Two- and four-particle correlations results are presented as well as a comparison of azimuthal correlations in Au+Au collisions to those in $p+p$ at the same energy. Elliptic anisotropy, $v_2$, is found to reach its maximum at $p_t \sim 3$ GeV/c, then decrease slowly and remain significant up to $p_t\approx 7$ -- 10 GeV/c. Stronger suppression is found in the back-to-back high-$p_t$ particle correlations for particles emitted out-of-plane compared to those emitted in-plane. The centrality dependence of $v_2$ at intermediate $p_t$ is compared to simple models based on jet quenching.
The results from the STAR Collaboration on directed flow (v_1), elliptic flow (v_2), and the fourth harmonic (v_4) in the anisotropic azimuthal distribution of particles from Au+Au collisions at sqrtsNN = 200 GeV are summarized and compared with results from other experiments and theoretical models. Results for identified particles are presented and fit with a Blast Wave model. Different anisotropic flow analysis methods are compared and nonflow effects are extracted from the data. For v_2, scaling with the number of constituent quarks and parton coalescence is discussed. For v_4, scaling with v_2^2 and quark coalescence is discussed.
We report STAR results on the azimuthal anisotropy parameter v2 for strange particles K0S, L and Lbar at midrapidity in Au+Au collisions at sNN = 130 GeV at RHIC. The value of v2 as a function of transverse momentum of the produced particles pt and collision centrality is presented for both particles up to pt 3.0 GeV/c. A strong pt dependence in v2 is observed up to 2.0 GeV/c. The v2 measurement is compared with hydrodynamic model calculations. The physics implications of the pt integrated v2 magnitude as a function of particle mass are also discussed.
We present the results of a systematic study of the shape of the pion distribution in coordinate space at freeze-out in Au+Au collisions at RHIC using two-pion Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) interferometry. Oscillations of the extracted HBT radii vs. emission angle indicate sources elongated perpendicular to the reaction plane. The results indicate that the pressure and expansion time of the collision system are not sufficient to completely quench its initial shape.
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