Scale-dependence of transverse momentum correlations in Pb-Au collisions at 158A GeV/c

TL;DR

This paper investigates how transverse momentum correlations in Pb-Au collisions vary with scale, revealing different contributing sources like flow and jet fragmentation using a scale-dependent analysis approach.

Contribution

It introduces a scale-dependent analysis method to distinguish various sources of transverse momentum correlations in heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Results agree with previous scale-independent analyses.

Different sources like quantum effects, flow, and jets are identified.

Scale dependence reveals distinct correlation contributions.

Abstract

We present results on transverse momentum correlations of charged particle pairs produced in Pb-Au collisions at 158$A$ GeV/$c$ at the Super Proton Synchrotron. The transverse momentum correlations have been studied as a function of collision centrality, angular separation of the particle pairs, transverse momentum and charge sign. We demonstrate that the results are in agreement with previous findings in scale-independent analyses at the same beam energy. Employing the two-particle momentum correlator $<\Delta p_{t,i}, \Delta p_{t,j}>$ and the cumulative $p_t$ variable $x(p_t)$, we identify, using the scale-dependent approach presented in this paper, different sources contributing to the measured correlations, such as quantum and Coulomb correlations, elliptic flow and mini-jet fragmentation.