ϕ Meson Production at Forward Rapidity with the PHENIX Detector at RHIC

Murad Sarsour

doi:10.1051/epjconf/201716407057

Abstract

The ϕ meson production in p +p collisions is an important tool to study QCD, providing data to tune phenomenological QCD models, while in high-energy heavy-ion collisions it provides key information on the hot and dense state of the strongly interacting matter produced in such collisions. It is sensitive to the medium-induced effects such as strangeness enhancement, a phenomenon associated with soft particles in bulk matter. Measurements in the dilepton channels are especially interesting since leptons interact only electromagnetically, thus carrying the information from their production phase directly to the detector. Measurements in different nucleus-nucleus collisions allow us to perform a systematic study of the nuclear medium effects on ϕ meson production. The PHENIX detector provides the capabilities to measure the ϕ meson production in a wide range of transverse momentum and rapidity to study various cold nuclear effects such as soft multiple parton rescattering and modification of the parton distribution functions in nuclei.In this proceeding, we report the most recent PHENIX results on ϕ meson production in p +p , d +Au and Cu+Au collisions.

Highlights

Ever since Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) announced the discovery of the hot and dense state of strongly interacting matter called Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) [1, 2], the main objective has been to quantify its properties
Ever since RHIC announced the discovery of the hot and dense state of strongly interacting matter called Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) [1, 2], the main objective has been to quantify its properties. This is accomplished by looking at as many observables as possible, such as the nuclear modification of φ meson production in the QGP environment. φ meson is an excellent probe for studying QGP because it is sensitive to several aspects of the collision, including modifications of strangeness production in bulk matter
There are additional effects from the nuclear medium itself and they are accessed by studying φ production in d+Au collisions

Summary

Introduction

Ever since RHIC announced the discovery of the hot and dense state of strongly interacting matter called Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) [1, 2], the main objective has been to quantify its properties. This is accomplished by looking at as many observables as possible, such as the nuclear modification of φ meson production in the QGP environment. Φ meson is an excellent probe for studying QGP (in Au+Au collisions) because it is sensitive to several aspects of the collision, including modifications of strangeness production in bulk matter. There are additional effects from the nuclear medium itself and they are accessed by studying φ production in d+Au collisions

Methods

Results

Conclusion