Are There Mach Cones in Heavy Ion Collisions? Three-Particle Correlations from STAR

Abstract

We present results from STAR on 3-particle azimuthal correlations for a $3<p_T<4$ GeV/c trigger particle with two softer $1<p_T<2$ GeV/c particles. Results are shown for pp, d+Au and high statistics Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200GeV$. We observe a 3-particle correlation in central Au+Au collisions which may indicate the presence of conical emission. In addition, the dependence of the observed signal angular position on the $p_T$ of the associated particles can be used to distinguish conical flow from simple QCD-Čerenkov radiation. An important aspect of the analysis is the subtraction of combinatorial backgrounds. Systematic uncertainties due to this subtraction and the flow harmonics $v_2$ and $v_4$ are investigated in detail.

arXiv commentPoster shown at Quark Matter 2006, Shanghai, China. 6 Pages, 6 Figures

References in corpus (7)

• Azimuthal anisotropy in Au+Au collisions at sqrtsNN = 200 GeV
• Distributions of Charged Hadrons Associated with High Transverse Momentum Particles in pp and Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV
• Collective Flow signals the Quark Gluon Plasma
• Modifications to Di-Jet Hadron Pair Correlations in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
• Cherenkov Radiation from Jets in Heavy-ion Collisions
• Large Angle Hadron Correlations from Medium-Induced Gluon Radiation
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Cited by in corpus (8)

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• The sound produced by a fast parton in the quark-gluon plasma is a "crescendo"
• Mach cones in the quark-gluon plasma: Viscosity, speed of sound, and effects of finite source structure
• Energy deposition in hard dihadron triggered events in heavy-ion collisions
• Three-particle cumulant Study of Conical Emission
• The fate of nonlinear perturbations near the QCD critical point
• The sound generated by a fast parton in the quark-gluon plasma is a crescendo
• Comparing different freeze-out scenarios in azimuthal hadron correlations induced by fast partons