Longitudinal asymmetry in heavy ion collisions at RHIC

TL;DR

This paper investigates how longitudinal asymmetry in heavy ion collisions at RHIC influences particle rapidity distributions and flow parameters, highlighting its significance especially in peripheral, smaller, and lower-energy collisions.

Contribution

It introduces a model-based analysis of longitudinal asymmetry effects on observables at RHIC energies, emphasizing the impact of rapidity shifts on collision outcomes.

Findings

Rapidity shift is more pronounced in peripheral and smaller systems.

Longitudinal asymmetry significantly affects charged particle distributions.

Polynomial coefficients effectively characterize the asymmetry's impact.

Abstract

The longitudinal asymmetry arises in relativistic heavy ion collisions due to fluctuation in the number of participating nucleons. This asymmetry causes a shift in the center of mass rapidity of the participant zone. The rapidity shift as well as the longitudinal asymmetry have been found to be significant at the top LHC energy for collisions of identical nuclei. We study the longitudinal asymmetry and its effect on charged particle rapidity distribution and anisotropic flow parameters at relatively lower RHIC energies using a model calculation. The rapidity shift is found to be more pronounced for peripheral collisions, smaller systems and also for lower beam energies due to longitudinal asymmetry. A detailed study has been done by associating the average rapidity shift to a polynomial relation where the coefficients of this polynomial characterize the effect of the asymmetry. We show that the rapidity shift may affect observables significantly at RHIC energies.