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.
We report first results on elliptic flow of identified particles at mid-rapidity in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=130$ GeV using the STAR TPC at RHIC. The elliptic flow as a function of transverse momentum and centrality differs significantly for particles of different masses. This dependence can be accounted for in hydrodynamic models, indicating that the system created shows a behavior consistent with collective hydrodynamical flow. The fit to the data with a simple model gives information on the temperature and flow velocities at freeze-out.
We report on the first measurement of elliptic flow $v_2(p_T)$ of multi-strange baryons $\Xi+\bar{Xi}$ and $\Omega+\bar{Omega} in heavy-ion collisions. In minimum bias Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV, a significant amount of elliptic flow, comparable to other non-strange baryons, is observed for multi-strange baryons which are expected to be particularly sensitive to the dynamics of the partonic stage of heavy-ion collisions. The $p_T$ dependence of $v_2$ of the multi-strange baryons confirms the number of constituent quark scaling previously observed for lighter hadrons. These results support the idea that a substantial fraction of the observed collective motion is developed at the early partonic stage in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions at RHIC.
Measurements of the elliptic flow, $v_{2}$, of identified hadrons ($\pi^{\pm}$, $K^{\pm}$, $K_{s}^{0}$, $p$, $\bar{p}$, $\phi$, $\Lambda$, $\bar{\Lambda}$, $\Xi^{-}$, $\bar{\Xi}^{+}$, $\Omega^{-}$, $\bar{\Omega}^{+}$) in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 7.7, 11.5, 19.6, 27, 39 and 62.4 GeV are presented. The measurements were done at mid-rapidity using the Time Projection Chamber and the Time-of-Flight detectors of the STAR experiment during the Beam Energy Scan program at RHIC. A significant difference in the $v_{2}$ values for particles and the corresponding anti-particles was observed at all transverse momenta for the first time. The difference increases with decreasing center-of-mass energy, $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ (or increasing baryon chemical potential, $\mu_{B}$) and is larger for the baryons as compared to the mesons. This implies that particles and anti-particles are no longer consistent with the universal number-of-constituent quark (NCQ) scaling of $v_{2}$ that was observed at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 200 GeV. However, for the group of particles NCQ scaling at $(m_{T}-m_{0})/n_{q}>$ 0.4 GeV/$c^{2}$ is not violated within $\pm$10%. The $v_{2}$ values for $\phi$ mesons at 7.7 and 11.5 GeV are approximately two standard deviations from the trend defined by the other hadrons at the highest measured $p_{T}$ values.
We present STAR results on the elliptic flow v_2 of charged hadrons, strange and multi-strange particles from sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions at RHIC. The detailed study of the centrality dependence of v_2 over a broad transverse momentum range is presented. Comparison of different analysis methods are made in order to estimate systematic uncertainties. In order to discuss the non-flow effect, we have performed the first analysis of v_2 with the Lee-Yang Zero method for K_s^0 and Lambda. In the relatively low p_T region, p_T <= 2 GeV/c, a scaling with m_T - m is observed for identified hadrons in each centrality bin studied. However, we do not observe v_2(p_T) scaled by the participant eccentricity to be independent of centrality. At higher p_T, 2 GeV/c <= p_T <= 6 GeV/c, v_2 scales with quark number for all hadrons studied. For the multi-strange hadron Omega, which does not suffer appreciable hadronic interactions, the values of v_2 are consistent with both m_T -m scaling at low p_T and number-of-quark scaling at intermediate p_T. As a function of collision centrality, an increase of p_T-integrated v_2 scaled by the participant eccentricity has been observed, indicating a stronger collective flow in more central Au+Au collisions.
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