We present a measurement of the transverse single-spin asymmetry for π0 and η mesons in p↑+ p collisions in the pseudorapidity range |η| < 0.35 and at a center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV with the ...PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. In comparison with previous measurements in this kinematic region, these results have factor-of-3-smaller uncertainties. As hadrons, π0 and η mesons are sensitive to both initial- and final-state nonperturbative effects for a mix of parton flavors. Comparisons of the differences in their transverse single-spin asymmetries have the potential to disentangle the possible effects of strangeness, isospin, or mass. These results can constrain the twist-3 trigluon collinear correlation function as well as the gluon Sivers function.
The PHENIX experiment has studied nuclear effects in p+Al and p+Au collisions at sNN=200GeV on charged hadron production at forward rapidity (1.4<η<2.4, p-going direction) and backward rapidity ...(-2.2<η<-1.2, A-going direction). Such effects are quantified by measuring nuclear modification factors as a function of transverse momentum and pseudorapidity in various collision multiplicity selections. In central p+Al and p+Au collisions, a suppression (enhancement) is observed at forward (backward) rapidity compared to the binary scaled yields in p+p collisions. The magnitude of enhancement at backward rapidity is larger in p+Au collisions than in p+Al collisions, which have a smaller number of participating nucleons. However, the results at forward rapidity show a similar suppression within uncertainties. The results in the integrated centrality are compared with calculations using nuclear parton distribution functions, which show a reasonable agreement at the forward rapidity but fail to describe the backward rapidity enhancement.
We present measurements of the transverse-momentum dependence of elliptic flow v2 for identified pions and (anti)protons at midrapidity (|η|<0.35), in 0%-5% central p+Au and He3+Au collisions at ...sNN=200 GeV. When taken together with previously published measurements in d+Au collisions at sNN=200 GeV, the results cover a broad range of small-collision-system multiplicities and intrinsic initial geometries. We observe a clear mass-dependent splitting of v2(pT) in d+Au and He3+Au collisions, just as in large nucleus-nucleus (A+A) collisions, and a smaller splitting in p+Au collisions. Both hydrodynamic and transport model calculations successfully describe the data at low pT (<1.5GeV/c), but fail to describe various features at higher pT. In all systems, the v2 values follow an approximate quark-number scaling as a function of the hadron transverse kinetic energy per constituent quark (KET/nq), which was also seen previously in A+A collisions.
Presented are the first measurements of the transverse single-spin asymmetries (AN) for neutral pions and eta mesons in p+Au and p+Al collisions at sNN=200 GeV in the pseudorapidity range |η|