Speaker
Sarah Campbell
(PHENIX)
Description
Collisions of simple systems, such as p+p, or p+Nucleus have been used as
benchmarks for our understanding of Heavy Ion Collisions, since it was
assumed they would be free of the effects from hot nuclear matter.▒
Recently long range correlations and anisotropies of momentum spectra have
been seen in such collisions, challenging this assumption. Such phenomena
have been understood to be the result of the collective motion, which can
best be described by hydrodynamics, whose initial conditions are set by
the geometry of the colliding systems, together with their fluctuations.
This talk will discuss the recent results from the PHENIX experiment at
RHIC using a variety of colliding species (p+Au, d+Au, He3+Au) which give
a better understanding of the origin of the observed correlations and
anisotropies, thus providing insight as to whether a Quark Gluon Plasma
is formed in these simple systems.▒
