Correlating elliptic flow with the mean transverse momentum in heavy-ion collisions: nuclear physics at high energy beyond the quark-gluon plasma

by Giuliano Giacalone (Université Paris-Saclay)

Tuesday 25 May 2021, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/Zurich

Zoom (CERN)

Experiments conducted at RHIC and LHC have demonstrated that nuclear collisions at high energy create small lumps of a quasi-perfect relativistic fluid, the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). The established fluid description of the QGP allows us today to exploit nuclear collisions in the study of remarkable phenomena beyond the original goals of the heavy-ion program. This can be achieved by studying multi-particle correlation observables where the measures of the anisotropy of the azimuthal emission of hadrons, the so-called flow coefficients, v_n, are correlated with the magnitude of the isotropic emission, i.e., the mean hadron transverse momentum, <pT>. These v_n-<pT> correlations allow one: i) to manipulate the strong electromagnetic fields produced in the interaction of nuclei at high energy; ii) to image the ground-state structure of the colliding ions; iii) to trigger manifestations of the dynamics of gluon fields in the pre-QGP stages of the collision process. I point out additional phenomena that can be analyzed with the same techniques, and emphasize that experimentally it will be possible to pursue such studies with success over the next decade.

seminar.pdf