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Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 252301 (2008) [6 pages]

System-Size Independence of Directed Flow Measured at the BNL Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider

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B. I. Abelev et al. STAR Collaboration
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Received 10 July 2008; published 16 December 2008

We measure directed flow (v1) for charged particles in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at sNN=200 and 62.4 GeV, as a function of pseudorapidity (η), transverse momentum (pt), and collision centrality, based on data from the STAR experiment. We find that the directed flow depends on the incident energy but, contrary to all available model implementations, not on the size of the colliding system at a given centrality. We extend the validity of the limiting fragmentation concept to v1 in different collision systems, and investigate possible explanations for the observed sign change in v1(pt).

© 2008 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.252301
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.252301
PACS:
25.75.Ld