Systematic Study of Highly Asymmetric Systems Using π0, h± and ϕ Production at PHENIX

Abstract

The observation of long range correlations in highly asymmetric systems, as in p+Pband d+Aucollisions, suggests a creation of a medium with collective behavior. Furthermore, hints of gluon saturation effects have been observed at forward rapidities in d+Aucollisions at RHIC. Single particle production has proven to be a valuable tool to probe the quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions as it is sensitive to energy loss, modifications of the nuclear wave function, and the dynamics of the projectile wave function. In order to systematically study these highly asymmetric collisions, RHIC provided beams for p+Al, p+Au, d+Auand 3He+Aucollisions. We present the new measurements of π0 at mid-rapidity (|η|<0.35) in p+Auand 3He+Aucollisions at sNN=200 GeV; and the charged hadron and ϕ production in forward (1.2<η<2.4) and backward (−2.2<η<−1.2) rapidities in p+Al, p+Auand 3He+Aucollisions at sNN=200 GeV.