1. Nuclear Physics Seminar

"Study of collective phenomena in pb-pb and p-pb collisions with the ATLAS detector."

Presented by Soumya Mohapatra, Stony Brook

Tuesday, March 19, 2013, 11 am
Small Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

Hosted by: Anne Sickles

In recent years, the measurement of harmonic flow coefficients $v_n$ has provided important insight into the hot and dense matter created in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. These coefficients are now understood to reflect the hydrodynamic response to the collision geometry in the initial state. Studying the $v_n$ and the correlation between their phases provides a understanding of the initial geometry as well as the hydrodynamic response of the produced medium. Further, due to finite number of nucleons in the colliding nuclei, the collision geometry can fluctuate event to event, and hence measuring the $v_n$ coefficients event-by-event can provide better insights on the nature of these fluctuations. In this talk I will summarize the ATLAS measurements of flow harmonics $v_n$ by event-plane and two-particle correlation method as well as the recent results on correlations between harmonic planes of different orders and event by event distributions of $v_n$ in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.76$~TeV. Recent ATLAS measurements of similar global phenomena in p-pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.02$~TeV will also be presented."