New estimator for symmetry plane correlations in anisotropic flow analyses
Abstract
Correlations of symmetry planes are important observables used to quantify anisotropic flow phenomena and constrain independently the properties of strongly interacting nuclear matter produced in the collisions of heavy ions at the highest energies. In this paper, we point out current problems in measuring correlations between symmetry planes and elaborate on why the available analysis techniques have a large systematic bias. To overcome this problem, we develop the first estimator for true symmetry plane correlations, and we introduce a new approach to approximate multiharmonic flow fluctuations via a two-dimensional Gaussian distribution. Employing this approximation, we introduce a new estimator, dubbed the Gaussian estimator (GE), to extract pure correlations between symmetry planes. We validate the GE by using the realistic event generator iEBE-VISHNU and demonstrate that it outperforms all existing estimators. Based on event-shape engineering, we propose an experimental strategy to improve the GE accuracy even further.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review C
- Pub Date:
- August 2020
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevC.102.024910
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2004.01066
- Bibcode:
- 2020PhRvC.102b4910B
- Keywords:
-
- Nuclear Experiment;
- High Energy Physics - Experiment;
- High Energy Physics - Phenomenology;
- Nuclear Theory
- E-Print:
- 14 pages, 4 figures. v2: minor revision, v2 submitted to journal