Saturation of azimuthal anisotropy in Au + Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 62 - 200 GeV

• Published in: Physical review letters 2005, Vol.94
• Main Authors: Adler, S.S., Afanasiev, S., Aidala, C., Ajitanand, N.N., Akiba, Y., Al-Jamel, A., Alexander, J., Amirikas, R., Aoki, K., Aphecetche, Laurent, Armendariz, R., Aronson, S.H., Averbeck, R., Awes, T.C., Azmoun, B., Azmoun, R., Babintsev, V., Baldisseri, A., Barish, K.N., Barnes, P.D., Bassalleck, B., Bathe, S., Batsouli, S., Baublis, V., Bauer, F., Bazilevsky, A., Belikov, S., Bennett, R., Berdnikov, Y., Bhagavatula, S., Bjorndal, M.T., Boissevain, J.G., Borel, H., Borenstein, S., Boyle, K., Brooks, M.L., Brown, D.S., Bruner, N., Bucher, D., Buesching, H., Bumazhnov, V., Bunce, G., Burward-Hoy, J.M., Butsyk, S., Camard, X., Campbell, S., Chai, J.-S., Chand, P., Chang, W.C., Chernichenko, S., Chi, C.Y., Chiba, J., Chiu, M., Choi, I.J., Choi, J., Choudhury, R.K., Chujo, T., Cianciolo, V., Cleven, C.R., Cobigo, Y., Cole, B.A., Comets, M.P., Constantin, P., Csanad, M., Csorgo, T., d'Enterria, D., Dahms, T., Das, K., David, G., Delagrange, H., Denisov, A., Deshpande, A., Desmond, E.J., Devismes, A., Dietzsch, O., Dion, A., Drachenberg, J.L., Drapier, O., Drees, A., Drees, K.A., Dubey, A.K., Du Rietz, R., Durum, A., Dutta, D., Dzhordzhadze, V., Efremenko, Y.V., Egdemir, J., El Chenawi, K., Enokizono, A., En'Yo, H., Espagnon, B., Esumi, S., Ewell, L., Fields, D.E., Fleuret, F., Fokin, S.L., Forestier, B., Fox, B.D., Fraenkel, Z., Frantz, J.E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Nuclear Experiment; Physics
• ISSN: 0031-9007; 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.232302

New measurements are presented for charged hadron azimuthal correlations at mid-rapidity in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 62.4 and 200 GeV. They are compared to earlier measurements obtained at sqrt(s_NN) = 130 GeV and in Pb+Pb collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 17.2 GeV. Sizeable anisotropies are observed with centrality and transverse momentum (p_T) dependence characteristic of elliptic flow (v_2). For a broad range of centralities, the observed magnitudes and trends of the differential anisotropy, v_2(p_T), change very little over the collision energy range sqrt(s_NN) = 62-200 GeV, indicating saturation of the excitation function for v_2 at these energies. Such a saturation may be indicative of the dominance of a very soft equation of state for sqrt(s_NN) = 62-200 GeV.