The method of two-photon lithography is used to fabricate microstructures with gradient of refractive index. The rectangular structures with sizes 25 × 25 × 3 μm were fabricated with varying laser ...intensity by linear or Gaussian distribution in one dimension. The resulting refractive index has been tuned in the range of 0.03. The suggested method can be applied to produce arbitrarily shaped 3D GRIN micro-optical elements.
Understanding gluon density distributions and how they are modified in nuclei are among the most important goals in nuclear physics. In recent years, diffractive vector meson production measured in ...ultraperipheral collisions (UPCs) at heavy-ion colliders has provided a new tool for probing the gluon density. In this Letter, we report the first measurement of J/ψ photoproduction off the deuteron in UPCs at the center-of-mass energy sqrts_{NN}=200 GeV in d+Au collisions. The differential cross section as a function of momentum transfer -t is measured. In addition, data with a neutron tagged in the deuteron-going zero-degree calorimeter is investigated for the first time, which is found to be consistent with the expectation of incoherent diffractive scattering at low momentum transfer. Theoretical predictions based on the color glass condensate saturation model and the leading twist approximation nuclear shadowing model are compared with the data quantitatively. A better agreement with the saturation model has been observed. With the current measurement, the results are found to be directly sensitive to the gluon density distribution of the deuteron and the deuteron breakup process, which provides insights into the nuclear gluonic structure.
The polarization of $Λ$ and $\bar{Λ}$ hyperons along the beam direction has been measured relative to the second and third harmonic event planes in isobar Ru + Ru and Zr + Zr collisions at ...$\sqrt{^SNN}$ = 200 GeV. This is the first experimental evidence of the hyperon polarization by the triangular flow originating from the initial density fluctuations. The amplitudes of the sine modulation for the second and third harmonic results are comparable in magnitude, increase from central to peripheral collisions, and show a mild pT dependence. The azimuthal angle dependence of the polarization follows the vorticity pattern expected due to elliptic and triangular anisotropic flow, and qualitatively disagree with most hydrodynamic model calculations based on thermal vorticity and shear induced contributions. The model results based on one of existing implementations of the shear contribution lead to a correct azimuthal angle dependence, but predict centrality and pT dependence that still disagree with experimental measurements. Thus, our results provide stringent constraints on the thermal vorticity and shear-induced contributions to hyperon polarization. Finally, comparison to previous measurements at RHIC and the LHC for the second-order harmonic results shows little dependence on the collision system size and collision energy.
The deconfined quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions enables the exploration of the fundamental properties of matter under extreme conditions. Noncentral collisions ...can produce strong magnetic fields on the order of 1018 G, which offers a probe into the electrical conductivity of the QGP. In particular, quarks and antiquarks carry opposite charges and receive contrary electromagnetic forces that alter their momenta. This phenomenon can be manifested in the collective motion of final-state particles, specifically in the rapidity-odd directed flow, denoted as v1(y). Here, we present the charge-dependent measurements of dv1/dy near midrapidities for π±, K±, and $p(\bar{p})$ in Au+Au and isobar $(^{96}_{44}Ru+^{96}_{44}Ru$ and $^{96}_{40}Zr+^{96}_{40}Zr)$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV, and in Au+Au collisions at 27 GeV, recorded by the STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The combined dependence of the v1 signal on collision system, particle species, and collision centrality can be qualitatively and semi-quantitatively understood as several effects on constituent quarks. While the results in central events can be explained by the u and d quarks transported from initial-state nuclei, those in peripheral events reveal the impacts of the electromagnetic field on the QGP. Our data put valuable constraints on the electrical conductivity of the QGP in theoretical calculations.
We present STAR measurements of strange hadron ( K S0, Λ , Λ ¯, Ξ -, Ξ ¯+, Ω -, Ω ¯+ , and Φ ) production at midrapidity ( |y|<0.5 ) in Au+Au collisions at sNN = 7.7–39 GeV from the Beam Energy Scan ...Program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Transverse-momentum spectra, averaged transverse mass, and the overall integrated yields of these strange hadrons are presented versus the centrality and collision energy. Antibaryon-to-baryon ratios ( Λ ¯/ Λ , Ξ ¯+/ Ξ -, Ω ¯+/ Ω - ) are presented as well and used to test a thermal statistical model and to extract the temperature normalized strangeness and baryon chemical potentials at hadronic freeze-out ( μB/Tch and μS/Tch ) in central collisions. Strange baryon-to-pion ratios are compared to various model predictions in central collisions for all energies. The nuclear modification factors ( RCP ) and antibaryon-to-meson ratios as a function of transverse momentum are presented for all collision energies. The K S0 RCP shows no suppression for pT up to 3.5 GeV/c at energies of 7.7 and 11.5 GeV. The Λ ¯/ K S0 ratio also shows baryon-to-meson enhancement at intermediate pT ( ≈2.5 GeV/c ) in central collisions at energies above 19.6 GeV. Lastly, both observations suggest that there is likely a change of the underlying strange quark dynamics at collision energies below 19.6 GeV.
The Breit-Wheeler process which produces matter and antimatter from photon collisions is experimentally investigated through the observation of 6085 exclusive electron-positron pairs in ...ultraperipheral Au + Au collisions at √sNN = 200 GeV . The measurements reveal a large fourth-order angular modulation of cos 4 Δ ϕ = ( 16.8 ± 2.5 ) % and smooth invariant mass distribution absent of vector mesons ( ϕ , ω , and ρ ) at the experimental limit of ≤ 0.2 % of the observed yields. The differential cross section as a function of e+ e− pair transverse momentum P⊥ peaks at low value with √⟨P⊥2 ⟩ = 38.1 ± 0.9 MeV and displays a significant centrality dependence. These features are consistent with QED calculations for the collision of linearly polarized photons quantized from the extremely strong electromagnetic fields generated by the highly charged Au nuclei at ultrarelativistic speed. The experimental results have implications for vacuum birefringence and for mapping the magnetic field which is important for emergent QCD phenomena.
Fluctuations of conserved quantities such as baryon number, charge, and strangeness are sensitive to the correlation length of the hot and dense matter created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions ...and can be used to search for the QCD critical point. We report the first measurements of the moments of net-kaon multiplicity distributions in Au+Au collisions at sNN=7.7, 11.5, 14.5, 19.6, 27, 39, 62.4, and 200 GeV. The collision centrality and energy dependence of the mean (M), variance (σ2), skewness (S), and kurtosis (κ) for net-kaon multiplicity distributions as well as the ratio σ2/M and the products Sσ and κσ2 are presented. Comparisons are made with Poisson and negative binomial baseline calculations as well as with UrQMD, a transport model (UrQMD) that does not include effects from the QCD critical point. Within current uncertainties, the net-kaon cumulant ratios appear to be monotonic as a function of collision energy.
We present the measurements of elliptic flow ($v_2$) of non-photonic electrons (NPE) by the STAR experiment using 2- and 4-particle correlations, $v_2${2} and $v_2${4}, and the event plane method in ...Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200$ GeV, and $v_2${2} at 62.4 and 39 GeV. $v_2${2} and $v_2${4} are non-zero at low and intermediate transverse momentum ($p_T$) at 200 GeV, and $v_2${2} is consistent with zero at low $p_T$ at other energies. For Au+Au collisions at $p_T<1$ GeV/c, there is a statistically significant difference between $v_2${2} at 200 GeV and $v_2${2} at the two lower beam energies.
In this letter, measurements of the shared momentum fraction (zg) and the groomed jet radius (Rg), as defined in the SoftDrop algorithm, are reported in p+p collisions at s=200 GeV collected by the ...STAR experiment. These substructure observables are differentially measured for jets of varying resolution parameters from R=0.2−0.6 in the transverse momentum range 15<pT,jet<60 GeV/c. These studies show that, in the pT,jet range accessible at s=200 GeV and with increasing jet resolution parameter and jet transverse momentum, the zg distribution asymptotically converges to the DGLAP splitting kernel for a quark radiating a gluon. The groomed jet radius measurements reflect a momentum-dependent narrowing of the jet structure for jets of a given resolution parameter, i.e., the larger the pT,jet, the narrower the first splitting. For the first time, these fully corrected measurements are compared to Monte Carlo generators with leading order QCD matrix elements and leading log in the parton shower, and to state-of-the-art theoretical calculations at next-to-leading-log accuracy. We observe that PYTHIA 6 with parameters tuned to reproduce RHIC measurements is able to quantitatively describe data, whereas PYTHIA 8 and HERWIG 7, tuned to reproduce LHC data, are unable to provide a simultaneous description of both zg and Rg, resulting in opportunities for fine parameter tuning of these models for p+p collisions at RHIC energies. We also find that the theoretical calculations without non-perturbative corrections are able to qualitatively describe the trend in data for jets of large resolution parameters at high pT,jet, but fail at small jet resolution parameters and low jet transverse momenta.
In high-energy heavy-ion collisions, partonic collectivity is evidenced by the constituent quark number scaling of elliptic flow anisotropy for identified hadrons. A breaking of this scaling and ...dominance of baryonic interactions is found for identified hadron collective flow measurements in sNN = 3 GeV Au+Au collisions. In this paper, we report measurements of the first- and second-order azimuthal anisotropic parameters, v1 and v2, of light nuclei (d, t, 3He, 4He) produced in sNN = 3 GeV Au+Au collisions at the STAR experiment. An atomic mass number scaling is found in the measured v1 slopes of light nuclei at mid-rapidity. For the measured v2 magnitude, a strong rapidity dependence is observed. Unlike v2 at higher collision energies, the v2 values at mid-rapidity for all light nuclei are negative and no scaling is observed with the atomic mass number. Calculations by the Jet AA Microscopic Transport Model (JAM), with baryonic mean-field plus nucleon coalescence, are in good agreement with our observations, implying baryonic interactions dominate the collective dynamics in 3 GeV Au+Au collisions at RHIC.
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