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Long Range Correlations and the Soft Ridge in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions

Sean Gavin, Larry McLerran, George Moschelli

Abstract

Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider experiments exhibit correlations peaked in relative azimuthal angle and extended in rapidity. Called the ridge, this peak occurs both with and without a jet trigger. We argue that the untriggered ridge arises when particles formed by flux tubes in an early glasma stage later manifest transverse flow. Combining a blast wave model of flow fixed by single-particle spectra with a simple description of the glasma, we find excellent agreement with current data.

Long Range Correlations and the Soft Ridge in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions

Abstract

Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider experiments exhibit correlations peaked in relative azimuthal angle and extended in rapidity. Called the ridge, this peak occurs both with and without a jet trigger. We argue that the untriggered ridge arises when particles formed by flux tubes in an early glasma stage later manifest transverse flow. Combining a blast wave model of flow fixed by single-particle spectra with a simple description of the glasma, we find excellent agreement with current data.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 12 equations, 2 figures.

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: Height of the near side peak vs. centrality for 200 GeV (top) and 62 GeV (bottom). Preliminary STAR data is from Daugherity:2006hz. Bands indicate the uncertainty of the blast wave parameters $T$ and $v$.
  • Figure 2: Azimuthal width of the near side peak vs. centrality. Preliminary STAR data is from Daugherity:2006hz. The curve is obtained for by fitting a gaussian to the computed distribution in the range $-\pi/2<\phi < \pi/2$. The band shows the sensitivity of the result to a 20% change in this range.