Speaker
Fengchu Zhou
(Central China Normal University (CN))
Description
A central goal of the heavy-ion program at LHC is to study the properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). The azimuthal anisotropy of particle production is a sensitive tool to study the features of the QGP. The anisotropy is typically characterized by $v_2$, the second harmonic coefficient of the Fourier series expansion of the particle azimuthal distribution with respect to the reaction plane. The observed $v_2$ is believed to be sensitive to different particle production mechanisms. At low transverse momentum ($p_{\rm t}$) $v_2$ encodes the information of the expansion driven by the initial pressure gradients. At high $p_{\rm t}$ it may be caused by path-length dependent parton energy loss. At intermediate $p_{\rm t}$ it may be related to the mechanism of quark coalescence.
In this poster, we present the $v_2$ measurements of $\pi^{0}$ and $\eta$ mesons using data from the 2011 heavy-ion run at the LHC. The neutral mesons are reconstructed using the ALICE Electromagnetic Calorimeter (EMCal), while the event plane is determined by the V0 detector. The measured $v_{2}$ is reported as a function of the transverse momentum for different centrality selections. In order to study the systematic uncertainty, the $v_2$ coefficient has been extracted using both the $dN/d#varphi$ method and invariant mass method. The determination of the event plane using different subdetectors in ALICE, as well as their resolution, are also explored and discussed.
Primary author
Collaboration ALICE
(CERN, Geneva, Switzerland)
Co-author
Fengchu Zhou
(Central China Normal University (CN))
