The Study of Flow and Non-flow Effects in Small Collision Systems

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/w0892b45q

Abstract

Recent research at RHIC and the LHC suggests that a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) can also be formed in the collisions of small systems (e.g., d+Au, p+Pb). In large collision systems (e.g., Au+Au, Pb+Pb), the effect of flow in the QGP is large compared to other contributions, the so-called "non-flow'' effects. However, in small collision systems, these non-flow effects are more dominant and must be better understood in order to extract the real flow signal from the data. In this thesis, I present calculations of elliptic flow v_2--- the second-order momentum anisotropy coefficient--- in d+Au, Au+Au, p+Pb, and Pb+Pb collisions at 20, 39, 62.5, 200 GeV and 5.02TeV from simulated data generated with the AMPT and the UrQMD models. The participant plane, the event plane, and the multi-particle cumulant methods are applied to analyze the simulated data.

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