Latest Flow Results from PHENIX at RHIC

TL;DR

This paper presents recent flow measurements from PHENIX at RHIC, focusing on azimuthal anisotropy ($v_2$) at low energies and higher order flow harmonics to explore properties of quark-gluon plasma and initial state fluctuations.

Contribution

It reports new flow results at low energies and higher order harmonics, providing insights into QGP properties and initial geometry fluctuations.

Findings

Flow results at energies $\, ext{≤}\, 62.4$ GeV

Evidence of hydrodynamic behavior at low $p_T$

Constraints on initial geometry fluctuations

Abstract

At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), key insights into the bulk properties of the hot and dense partonic matter arise from the study of azimuthal anisotropy ($v_2$) of the produced particles. These insights include indicating the matter undergoes rapid thermalization and behaves hydrodynamically at low $p_T$. Recently a low energy scan ($\le \sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 62.4 GeV) began at RHIC to search for the QGP critical point, where a change in $v_2$ from higher energies could play a key role in its identification. Additionally, higher order flow harmonics have recently been shown to provide constraints on initial geometry fluctuations. Discussed here are some of the latest low energy and higher order flow results from PHENIX.