Measurement of $\varphi$-meson production in Cu$+$Au at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}=200$ GeV and U$+$U at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}=193$ GeV

Abstract

The PHENIX experiment reports systematic measurements at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider of $\varphi$-meson production in asymmetric Cu$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}$=200 GeV and in U$+$U collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}$=193 GeV. Measurements were performed via the $\varphi \to K^{+}{K}^{-}$ decay channel at midrapidity $|\eta |<0.35$. Features of $\varphi$-meson production measured in Cu$+$Cu, Cu$+$Au, Au$+$Au, and U$+$U collisions were found to not depend on the collision geometry, which was expected because the yields are averaged over the azimuthal angle and follow the expected scaling with nuclear-overlap size. The elliptic flow of the $\varphi$ meson in Cu$+$Au, Au$+$Au, and U$+$U collisions scales with second-order-participant eccentricity and the length scale of the nuclear-overlap region (estimated with the number of participating nucleons). At moderate $p_T$, $\varphi$-meson production measured in Cu$+$Au and U$+$U collisions is consistent with coalescence-model predictions, whereas at high $p_T$ the production is in agreement with expectations for in-medium energy loss of parent partons prior to their fragmentation. The elliptic flow for $\varphi$ mesons measured in Cu$+$Au and U$+$U collisions is well described by a (2+1)D viscous-hydrodynamic model with specific-shear viscosity $\eta /s=1/4\pi$.

412 authors from 76 institutions, 16 pages, 12 figures, 9 tables, 2012 data. v2 is version accepted for publication by Physical Review C. HEPdata for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.html

References in corpus (12)

• An Introduction to PYTHIA 8.2
• Glauber Modeling in High Energy Nuclear Collisions
• Measurements of Strange Particle Production in $p+p$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}$= 200 GeV
• Phobos results on charged particle multiplicity and pseudorapidity distributions in Au+Au, Cu+Cu, d+Au, and p+p collisions at ultra-relativistic energies
• Elliptic flow for phi mesons and (anti)deuterons in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
• Parton Distributions in Nucleons and Nuclei
• Nuclear modification factors of phi mesons in d+Au, Cu+Cu and Au+Au collisions at sqrt(S_NN)=200 GeV
• Phi-meson photoproduction from nuclei
• Predictions of elliptic flow and nuclear modification factor from 200 GeV U + U collisions at RHIC
• Study of $\varphi$-meson production in $p$$+$Al, $p$$+$Au, $d$$+$Au, and ${}^3$He$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}=200$ GeV
• Production of ${\pi }^0$ and $\eta$ mesons in U$+$U collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}=192$ GeV
• Characterization and analysis of azimuthally sensitive correlations

Cited by in corpus (5)

• K${}^{\ast }$(892)${}^{\pm }$ resonance production in Pb$-$Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV
• System size dependence of the hadronic rescattering effect at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
• Identified charged-hadron production in $p$$+$Al, ${}^3$He$+$Au, and Cu$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}=200$ GeV and in U$+$U collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}=193$ GeV
• Measurement of f${}_1$(1285) production in pp collisions at $\sqrt{\text{s}}$ = 13 TeV
• Cross sections for inelastic $K$+$\varphi$ scattering