We present azimuthal angle correlations of intermediate transverse momentum (1-4 GeV/c) hadrons from {dijets} in Cu+Cu and Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 62.4 and 200 GeV. The away-side dijet induced azimuthal correlation is broadened, non-Gaussian, and peaked away from \Delta\phi=\pi in central and semi-central collisions in all the systems. The broadening and peak location are found to depend upon the number of participants in the collision, but not on the collision energy or beam nuclei. These results are consistent with sound or shock wave models, but pose challenges to Cherenkov gluon radiation models.

The PHENIX experiment at RHIC has measured transverse energy and charged particle multiplicity at mid-rapidity in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 19.6, 130 and 200 GeV as a function of centrality. The presented results are compared to measurements from other RHIC experiments, and experiments at lower energies. The sqrt(s_NN) dependence of dE_T/deta and dN_ch/deta per pair of participants is consistent with logarithmic scaling for the most central events. The centrality dependence of dE_T/deta and dN_ch/deta is similar at all measured incident energies. At RHIC energies the ratio of transverse energy per charged particle was found independent of centrality and growing slowly with sqrt(s_NN). A survey of comparisons between the data and available theoretical models is also presented.

The azimuthal distribution of identified pi^0 and inclusive photons has been measured in sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions with the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The second harmonic parameter (v_2) was measured to describe the observed anisotropy of the azimuthal distribution. The measured inclusive photon v_2 is consistent with the value expected for the photons from hadron decay and is also consistent with the lack of direct photon signal over the measured p_T range 1-6 GeV/c. An attempt is made to extract v_2 of direct photons.

Azimuthal angle \Delta\phi correlations are presented for charged hadrons from dijets for 0.4 < p_T < 10 GeV/c in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. With increasing p_T, the away-side distribution evolves from a broad to a concave shape, then to a convex shape. Comparisons to p+p data suggest that the away-side can be divided into a partially suppressed 'head' region centered at Delta\phi ~ \pi, and an enhanced 'shoulder' region centered at Delta\phi ~ \pi +/- 1.1. The p_T spectrum for the 'head' region softens toward central collisions, consistent with the onset of jet quenching. The spectral slope for the 'shoulder' region is independent of centrality and trigger p_T, which offers constraints on energy transport mechanisms and suggests that the 'shoulder' region contains the medium response to energetic jets.

For Au + Au collisions at 200 GeV we measure neutral pion production with good statistics for transverse momentum, p_T, up to 20 GeV/c. A fivefold suppression is found, which is essentially constant for 5 < p_T < 20 GeV/c. Experimental uncertainties are small enough to constrain any model-dependent parameterization for the transport coefficient of the medium, e.g. \mean(q^hat) in the parton quenching model. The spectral shape is similar for all collision classes, and the suppression does not saturate in Au+Au collisions/ instead, it increases proportional to the number of participating nucleons, as N_part^2/3.

Event-by-event fluctuations of the average transverse momentum of produced particles near mid-rapidity have been measured by the PHENIX Collaboration in sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV Au+Au and p+p collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The fluctuations are observed to be in excess of the expectation for statistically independent particle emission for all centralities. The excess fluctuations exhibit a dependence on both the centrality of the collision and on the transverse momentum window over which the average is calculated. Both the centrality and p_T dependence can be well reproduced by a simulation of random particle production with the addition of contributions from hard scattering processes.

Transverse momentum (p^e_T) spectra of electrons from semileptonic weak decays of heavy flavor mesons in the range of 0.3 < p^e_T < 9.0 GeV/c have been measured at mid-rapidity (|eta| < 0.35) by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in p+p and Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV. The nuclear modification factor R_AA with respect to p+p collisions indicates substantial energy loss of heavy quarks in the produced medium. In addition, the azimuthal anisotropy parameter v_2 has been measured for 0.3 < p^e_T < 5.0 GeV/c in Au+Au collisions. Comparisons of R_AA and v_2 are made to various model calculations.

Emission source functions are extracted from correlation functions constructed from charged pions produced at mid-rapidity in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV. The source parameters extracted from these functions at low k_T, give first indications of a long tail for the pion emission source. The source extension cannot be explained solely by simple kinematic considerations. The possible role of a halo of secondary pions from resonance emissions is explored.

We report on charged hadron production in deuteron-gold reactions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. Our measurements in the deuteron-direction cover 1.4 < eta < 2.2, referred to as forward rapidity, and in the gold-direction -2.0 < eta < -1.4, referred to as backward rapidity, and a transverse momentum range p_T = 0.5-4.0 GeV/c. We compare the relative yields for different deuteron-gold collision centrality classes. We observe a suppression relative to binary collision scaling at forward rapidity, sensitive to low momentum fraction (x) partons in the gold nucleus, and an enhancement at backward rapidity, sensitive to high momentum fraction partons in the gold nucleus.

PHENIX has measured the centrality dependence of charged hadron p_T spectra from central Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=130 GeV. The truncated mean p_T decreases with centrality for p_T > 2 GeV/c, indicating an apparent reduction of the contribution from hard scattering to high p_T hadron production. For central collisions the yield at high p_T is shown to be suppressed compared to binary nucleon-nucleon collision scaling of p+p data. This suppression is monotonically increasing with centrality, but most of the change occurs below 30% centrality, i.e. for collisions with less than about 140 participating nucleons. The observed p_T and centrality dependence is consistent with the particle production predicted by models including hard scattering and subsequent energy loss of the scattered partons in the dense matter created in the collisions.

The production of low mass e+e- pairs for m_{e+e-} < 300 MeV/c^2 and 1 < p_T <5 GeV/c is measured in p+p and Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV. Enhanced yield above hadronic sources is observed. Treating the excess as internal conversions, the invariant yield of direct photons is deduced. In central Au+Au collisions, the excess of direct photon yield over p+p is exponential in transverse momentum, with inverse slope T = 221 +/- 19 (stat) +/- 19 (syst) MeV. Hydrodynamical models with initial temperatures ranging from 300--600 MeV at times of ~ 0.6 - 0.15 fm/c after the collision are in qualitative agreement with the data. Lattice QCD predicts a phase transition to quark gluon plasma at ~ 170 MeV.

The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has measured omega meson production via leptonic and hadronic decay channels in p+p, d+Au, Cu+Cu, and Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. The invariant transverse momentum spectra measured in different decay modes give consistent results. Measurements in the hadronic decay channel in Cu+Cu and Au+Au collisions show that omega production has a suppression pattern at high transverse momentum, similar to that of pi^0 and eta in central collisions, but no suppression is observed in peripheral collisions. The nuclear modification factors, R_AA, are consistent in Cu+Cu and Au+Au collisions at similar numbers of participant nucleons.

The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has performed systematic measurements of phi meson production in the K+K- decay channel at midrapidity in p+p, d+Au, Cu+Cu and Au+Au collisions at sqrt(S_NN)=200 GeV. Results are presented on the phi invariant yield and the nuclear modification factor R_AA for Au+Au and Cu+Cu, and R_dA for d+Au collisions, studied as a function of transverse momentum (1&lt;p_T&lt;7 GeV/c) and centrality. In central and mid-central Au+Au collisions, the R_AA of phi exhibits a suppression relative to expectations from binary scaled p+p results. The amount of suppression is smaller than that of the neutral pion and the eta meson in the intermediate p_T range (2--5 GeV/c); whereas at higher p_T the phi, pi^0, and eta show similar suppression. The baryon (protons and anti-protons) excess observed in central Au+Au collisions at intermediate p_T is not observed for the phi meson despite the similar mass of the proton and the phi. This suggests that the excess is linked to the number of constituent quarks rather than the hadron mass. The difference gradually disappears with decreasing centrality and for peripheral collisions the R_AA values for both particles are consistent with binary scaling. Cu+Cu collisions show the same yield and suppression as Au+Au collisions for the same number of N_part. The R_dA of phi shows no evidence for cold nuclear effects within uncertainties.

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.

We report the measurement of cumulants ($C_n, n=1\ldots4$) of the net-charge distributions measured within pseudorapidity ($|\eta|<0.35$) in Au$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=7.7-200$ GeV with the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The ratios of cumulants (e.g. $C_1/C_2$, $C_3/C_1$) of the net-charge distributions, which can be related to volume independent susceptibility ratios, are studied as a function of centrality and energy. These quantities are important to understand the quantum-chromodynamics phase diagram and possible existence of a critical end point. The measured values are very well described by expectation from negative binomial distributions. We do not observe any nonmonotonic behavior in the ratios of the cumulants as a function of collision energy. The measured values of $C_1/C_2 = \mu/\sigma^2$ and $C_3/C_1 = S\sigma^3/\mu$ can be directly compared to lattice quantum-chromodynamics calculations and thus allow extraction of both the chemical freeze-out temperature and the baryon chemical potential at each center-of-mass energy.

Longitudinal density correlations of produced matter in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV have been measured from the inclusive charged particle distributions as a function of pseudorapidity window sizes. The extracted \alpha \xi parameter, related to the susceptibility of the density fluctuations in the long wavelength limit, exhibits a non-monotonic behavior as a function of the number of participant nucleons, N_part. A local maximum is seen at N_part ~ 90, with corresponding energy density based on the Bjorken picture of \epsilon_Bj \tau ~ 2.4 GeV/(fm^2 c) with a transverse area size of 60 fm^2. This behavior may suggest a critical phase boundary based on the Ginzburg-Landau framework.

We have studied the dependence of azimuthal anisotropy $v_2$ for inclusive and identified charged hadrons in Au$+$Au and Cu$+$Cu collisions on collision energy, species, and centrality. The values of $v_2$ as a function of transverse momentum $p_T$ and centrality in Au$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$=200 GeV and 62.4 GeV are the same within uncertainties. However, in Cu$+$Cu collisions we observe a decrease in $v_2$ values as the collision energy is reduced from 200 to 62.4 GeV. The decrease is larger in the more peripheral collisions. By examining both Au$+$Au and Cu$+$Cu collisions we find that $v_2$ depends both on eccentricity and the number of participants, $N_{\rm part}$. We observe that $v_2$ divided by eccentricity ($\varepsilon$) monotonically increases with $N_{\rm part}$ and scales as ${N_{\rm part}^{1/3}}$. The Cu$+$Cu data at 62.4 GeV falls below the other scaled $v_{2}$ data. For identified hadrons, $v_2$ divided by the number of constituent quarks $n_q$ is independent of hadron species as a function of transverse kinetic energy $KE_T=m_T-m$ between $0.1<KE_T/n_q<1$ GeV. Combining all of the above scaling and normalizations, we observe a near-universal scaling, with the exception of the Cu$+$Cu data at 62.4 GeV, of $v_2/(n_q\cdot\varepsilon\cdot N^{1/3}_{\rm part})$ vs $KE_T/n_q$ for all measured particles.

Background: Heavy-flavor production in p+p collisions tests perturbative-quantum-chromodynamics (pQCD) calculations. Modification of heavy-flavor production in heavy-ion collisions relative to binary-collision scaling from p+p results, quantified with the nuclear-modification factor (R_AA), provides information on both cold- and hot-nuclear-matter effects. Purpose: Determine transverse-momentum, pt, spectra and the corresponding R_AA for muons from heavy-flavor mesons decay in p+p and Cu+Cu collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV and y=1.65. Method: Results are obtained using the semi-leptonic decay of heavy-flavor mesons into negative muons. The PHENIX muon-arm spectrometers measure the p_T spectra of inclusive muon candidates. Backgrounds, primarily due to light hadrons, are determined with a Monte-Carlo calculation using a set of input hadron distributions tuned to match measured-hadron distributions in the same detector and statistically subtracted. Results: The charm-production cross section in p+p collisions at sqrt{s}=200 GeV, integrated over pt and in the rapidity range 1.4<y<1.9 is found to be dsigma_ccbar/dy = 0.139 +/- 0.029 (stat) ^{+0.051}_{-0.058} (syst) mb. This result is consistent with calculations and with expectations based on the corresponding midrapidity charm-production cross section measured earlier by PHENIX. The R_AA for heavy-flavor muons in Cu+Cu collisions is measured in three centrality intervals for 1<pt<4 GeV/c. Suppression relative to binary-collision scaling (R_AA<1) increases with centrality. Conclusions: Within experimental and theoretical uncertainties, the measured heavy-flavor yield in p+p collisions is consistent with state-of-the-art pQCD calculations. Suppression in central Cu+Cu collisions suggests the presence of significant cold-nuclear-matter effects and final-state energy loss.

A three-dimensional (3D) correlation function obtained from mid-rapidity, low pT pion pairs in central Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV is studied. The extracted model-independent source function indicates a long range tail in the directions of the pion pair transverse momentum (out) and the beam (long). Model comparisons to these distensions indicate a proper breakup time \tau_0 ~ 9 fm/c and a mean proper emission duration \Delta\tau ~ 2 fm/c, leading to sizable emission time differences (<|\Delta \tau_LCM |> ~ 12 fm/c), partly due to resonance decays. They also suggest an outside-in 'burning' of the emission source reminiscent of many hydrodynamical models.

We present the first results of meson production in the K^+K^- decay channel from Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV as measured at mid-rapidity by the PHENIX detector at RHIC. Precision resonance centroid and width values are extracted as a function of collision centrality. No significant variation from the PDG accepted values is observed. The transverse mass spectra are fitted with a linear exponential function for which the derived inverse slope parameter is seen to be constant as a function of centrality. These data are also fitted by a hydrodynamic model with the result that the freeze-out temperature and the expansion velocity values are consistent with the values previously derived from fitting single hadron inclusive data. As a function of transverse momentum the collisions scaled peripheral.to.central yield ratio RCP for the is comparable to that of pions rather than that of protons. This result lends support to theoretical models which distinguish between baryons and mesons instead of particle mass for explaining the anomalous proton yield.

Detailed differential measurements of the elliptic flow for particles produced in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV are presented. Predictions from perfect fluid hydrodynamics for the scaling of the elliptic flow coefficient v_2 with eccentricity, system size and transverse energy are tested and validated. For transverse kinetic energies KE_T ~ m_T-m up to ~1 GeV, scaling compatible with the hydrodynamic expansion of a thermalized fluid is observed for all produced particles. For large values of KE_T, the mesons and baryons scale separately. A universal scaling for the flow of both mesons and baryons is observed for the full transverse kinetic energy range of the data when quark number scaling is employed. In both cases the scaling is more pronounced in terms of KE_T rather than transverse momentum.

Correlations between p and pbar's at transverse momenta typical of enhanced baryon production in Au+Au collisions are reported. The PHENIX experiment measures same and opposite sign baryon pairs in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. Correlated production of p and p^bar with the trigger particle from the range 2.5 < p_T < 4.0 GeV/c and the associated particle with 1.8 < p_T < 2.5 GeV/c is observed to be nearly independent of the centrality of the collisions. Same sign pairs show no correlation at any centrality. The conditional yield of mesons triggered by baryons (and anti-baryons) and mesons in the same pT range rises with increasing centrality, except for the most central collisions, where baryons show a significantly smaller number of associated mesons. These data are consistent with a picture in which hard scattered partons produce correlated p and p^bar in the p_T region of the baryon excess.

A comprehensive survey of event-by-event fluctuations of charged hadron multiplicity in relativistic heavy ions is presented. The survey covers Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 62.4 and 200 GeV, and Cu+Cu collisions sqrt(s_NN) = 22.5, 62.4, and 200 GeV. Fluctuations are measured as a function of collision centrality, transverse momentum range, and charge sign. After correcting for non-dynamical fluctuations due to fluctuations in the collision geometry within a centrality bin, the remaining dynamical fluctuations expressed as the variance normalized by the mean tend to decrease with increasing centrality. The dynamical fluctuations are consistent with or below the expectation from a superposition of participant nucleon-nucleon collisions based upon p+p data, indicating that this dataset does not exhibit evidence of critical behavior in terms of the compressibility of the system. An analysis of Negative Binomial Distribution fits to the multiplicity distributions demonstrates that the heavy ion data exhibit weak clustering properties.

Differential elliptic flow (v_2) for phi mesons and (anti)deuterons (d^bar)d is measured for Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. The v_2 for phi mesons follows the trend of lighter pi^+/- and K^+/- mesons, suggesting that ordinary hadrons interacting with standard hadronic cross sections are not the primary driver for elliptic flow development. The v_2 values for (d^bar)d suggest that elliptic flow is additive for composite particles. This further validation of the universal scaling of v_2 per constituent quark for baryons and mesons suggests that partonic collectivity dominates the transverse expansion dynamics.

Two particle azimuthal correlation functions are presented for charged hadrons produced in Au + Au collisions at RHIC sqrt(s_NN) = 130 GeV. The measurements permit determination of elliptic flow without event-by-event estimation of the reaction plane. The extracted elliptic flow values v_2 show significant sensitivity to both the collision centrality and the transverse momenta of emitted hadrons, suggesting rapid thermalization and relatively strong velocity fields. When scaled by the eccentricity of the collision zone, epsilon, the scaled elliptic flow shows little or no dependence on centrality for charged hadrons with relatively low p_T. A breakdown of this epsilon scaling is observed for charged hadrons with p_T > 1.0 GeV/c for the most central collisions.