Flow and non-flow correlations from four-particle multiplets in STAR

TL;DR

This paper presents elliptic flow measurements in Au+Au collisions at RHIC using four-particle correlations to distinguish genuine flow signals from non-flow effects, providing more accurate flow analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a four-particle correlation method to better separate flow from non-flow effects in heavy-ion collision data.

Findings

Four-particle correlation analysis effectively filters non-flow contributions.

Results show consistent elliptic flow signals across different methods.

Comparison highlights the importance of accounting for non-flow effects.

Abstract

Elliptic flow results are presented for Au + Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 130$ GeV in RHIC. This signal is investigated as a function of transverse momentum, rapidity and centrality. Results from four-particle correlation analysis, which can filter out contributions to the flow signal from correlations unrelated to the event reaction plane (``non-flow''), are presented and compared to the conventional method, in which non-flow effects are treated as part of the systematic uncertainty.