Factorization of event-plane correlations over transverse momentum in relativistic heavy ion collisions in a multi-phase transport model

TL;DR

This study investigates how event-plane correlations vary with transverse momentum in heavy ion collisions using a multi-phase transport model, revealing decorrelation and factorization phenomena consistent with experimental data.

Contribution

It demonstrates that event-plane correlations over transverse momentum approximately factorize into single-bin correlations to a common plane, which differs from the participant plane.

Findings

EP correlations are smaller than unity, indicating decorrelation over pT.

EP correlations approximately factorize into single pT-bin correlations.

The common plane is the momentum-space EP integrated over all pT, not the participant plane.

Abstract

Momentum-space azimuthal harmonic event planes (EP) are constructed from final-state midrapidity particles binned in transverse momentum (pT ) in sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions in a multi-phase transport (AMPT) model. The EP correlations between pT bins, corrected by EP resolutions, are smaller than unity. This indicates that the EP's decorrelate over pT in AMPT, qualitatively consistent with data and hydrodynamic calculations. It is further found that the EP correlations approximately factorize into single pT-bin EP correlations to a common plane. This common plane appears to be the momentum-space EP integrated over all pT, not the configuration space participant plane (PP).