Measurement of elliptic flow of J$/\ddot{I}ˆ$ in $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}=200$ GeV Au$+$Au collisions at forward rapidity

Abstract

We report the first measurement of the azimuthal anisotropy of J$/\ddot{I}ˆ$ at forward rapidity ($1.2<|\hat{I}\cdot |<2.2$) in Au$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}=200$ GeV at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The data were collected by the PHENIX experiment in 2014 and 2016 with integrated luminosity of 14.5~nb${}^{-1}$. The second Fourier coefficient ($v_2$) of the azimuthal distribution of $J/\ddot{I}ˆ$ is determined as a function of the transverse momentum ($p_T$) using the event-plane method. The measurements were performed for several selections of collision centrality: 0\%--50\%, 10\%--60\%, and 10\%-40\%. We find that in all cases the values of $v_2(p_T)$, which quantify the elliptic flow of J$/\ddot{I}ˆ$, are consistent with zero. The results are consistent with measurements at midrapidity, indicating no significant elliptic flow of the J$/\ddot{I}ˆ$ within the quark-gluon-plasma medium at collision energies of $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}=200$ GeV.

369 authors from 72 institutions, 12 pages, 7 figures, 5 tables. v1 is version submitted to Physical Review C. HEPdata tables 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