Similar flow in p+p and Au+Au collisions at RHIC?

✍ Scribed by Mike Lisa

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 254 KB
• Volume: 827
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0375-9474
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2009.05.081

✦ Synopsis

Collective, explosive flow in central heavy ion collisions manifests itself in the mass dependence of pT distributions and femtoscopic length scales, measured in the soft sector (pT 1 GeV/c). Measured p T distributions from proton-proton collisions differ significantly from those from heavy ion collisions. This has been taken as evidence that p+p collisions generate little collective flow, a conclusion in line with naive expectations. We point out possible hazards of ignoring conservation laws when comparing high-and low-multiplicity final states. We argue that the effects of energy and momentum conservation actually dominate the observed systematics, and that p + p collisions may be much more similar to heavy ion collisions than generally thought.