Anisotropic Flow Measurement in Ultra-Central Pb-Pb Collisions For Run 10 and Run 11 by ALICE

The mission of relativistic heavy-ion collisions is to create an extremely hot and dense medium where the quarks and gluons become deconfined from their typical hadronic states. This unique state of matter is known as the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). The collective flow of the system plays a critical role in establishing the equation of state of the QGP. Among different orders of azimuthal flow, the second order elliptic flow receives keen attention and will be analyzed in the ultra-central collision centrality range. Various hydrodynamic simulations show that v_n correlates almost linearly with the initial eccentricity \varepsilon_n of the system (which fluctuates on an event by event basis). This indicates that the measurement of v_n fluctuations are extremely sensitive to the initial state configuration. This thesis will analyze higher order cumulants, and investigate how they can constrain the initial state. The second order flow (v₂) from 2, 4, and 6-particle correlations for LHC Runs 10 and 11 of Pb-Pb collisions at the center of mass energy \sqrt{s_NN} = 2.76 TeV are presented. A series of statistical and systematic uncertainty checks for data collected from Run 10 and Run 11 was performed, and the usefulness of the measured results in their theoretical context will be discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Physics

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Ng, Fabian 1990-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Timmins, Anthony

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Koerner, Lisa W.
• Pinsky, Lawrence S.
• Miller, John H., Jr.
• Solorio, Thamar

• Anisotropic flow
• V2
• Second order flow
• Collective expansion
• Qgp
• Quark-gluon plasma
• High energy physics

Statement dc:rights

• The author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10657/3408

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/3408