Separation of flow from chiral magnetic effect in U+U collisions using spectator asymmetry

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to distinguish the chiral magnetic effect signal from flow background in U+U collisions by exploiting the correlation between spectator asymmetry and initial ellipticity caused by the Uranium nucleus shape.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using spectator asymmetry to separate flow background from chiral magnetic effect signals in uranium collisions.

Findings

Spectator asymmetry correlates with initial ellipticity in U+U collisions.

The method can effectively isolate chiral magnetic effect signals from flow background.

Prolate uranium shape influences initial collision geometry and observable correlations.

Abstract

We demonstrate that the prolate shape of the Uranium nucleus generates anti-correlation between spectator asymmetry and initial state ellipticity of the collision zone, providing a way to constrain the initial event shape in U+U collisions. As an application, we show that this can be used to separate the background contribution due to flow from the signals of chiral magnetic effect.