Raimond Snellings

Collective Flow and Viscosity in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

We review collective flow, its anisotropies, and its event-to-event fluctuations in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, as well as the extraction of the specific shear viscosity of quark–gluon plasma from collective flow data collected in heavy-ion collision experiments at RHIC and the LHC. We emphasize the similarities between the Big Bang of our universe and the Little Bangs created in heavy-ion collisions.

The STAR time projection chamber: a unique tool for studying high multiplicity events at RHIC

The STAR Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is used to record the collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The TPC is the central element in a suite of detectors that surrounds the interaction vertex. The TPC provides complete coverage around the beam-line, and provides complete tracking for charged particles within ± 1.8 units of pseudo-rapidity of the center-of-mass frame. Charged particles with momenta greater than

Collective phenomena in non-central nuclear collisions

Recent developments in the field of anisotropic flow in nuclear collision are reviewed. The results from the top AGS energy to the top RHIC energy are discussed with emphasis on techniques, interpretation, and uncertainties in the measurements.

Flow analysis with cumulants: Direct calculations

Anisotropic flow measurements in heavy-ion collisions provide important information on the properties of hot and dense matter. These measurements are based on analysis of azimuthal correlations and might be biased by contributions from correlations that are not related to the initial geometry, so-called nonflow. To improve anisotropic flow measurements, advanced methods based on multiparticle correlations (cumulants) have been developed to suppress nonflow contribution. These multiparticle correlations can be calculated by looping over all possible multiplets, however, this quickly becomes prohibitively CPU intensive. Therefore, the most used technique for cumulant calculations is based on generating functions. This method involves approximations, and has its own biases, which complicates the interpretation of the results. In this paper we present a new exact method for direct calculations of multiparticle cumulants using moments of the flow vectors.

Elliptic flow: a brief review

One of the fundamental questions in the field of subatomic physics is the question of what happens to matter at extreme densities and temperatures as may have existed in the first microseconds after the Big Bang and exists, perhaps, in the core of dense neutron stars. The aim of heavy-ion physics is to collide nuclei at very high energies and thereby create such a state of matter in the laboratory. The experimental program began in the 1990s with collisions made available at the Brookhaven Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) and the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), and continued at the Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) with the maximum center- of-mass energies of p sNN = 4.75, 17.2 and 200GeV, respectively. Collisions of heavy ions at the unprecedented energy of 2.76TeV recently became available at the LHC collider at CERN. In this review, I give a brief introduction to the physics of ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions and discuss the current status of elliptic flow measurements. Contents

J/ψ Production as a Function of Charged Particle Multiplicity in pp Collisions at s√=7 TeV

The ALICE Collaboration reports the measurement of the relative J/psi yield as a function of charged particle pseudorapidity density dN(ch)/d eta in pp collisions at root s = 7 TeV at the LHC. J/psi particles are detected for p(t) > 0, in the rapidity interval vertical bar y vertical bar 0. In the highest multiplicity interval with (dN(ch)/d eta)(bin)) = 24.1, corresponding to four times the minimum bias multiplicity density, an enhancement relative to the minimum bias J/psi yield by a factor of about 5 at 2.5 < y <4 (8 at vertical bar y vertical bar < 0.9) is observed

Centrality dependence of charged particle production at large transverse momentum in Pb–Pb collisions at √sNN =2.76 TeV

The inclusive transverse momentum (

Anisotropic flow at the LHC measured with the ALICE detector

p_{\rm T}

Transverse Momentum Distribution and Nuclear Modification Factor of Charged Particles in p+Pb Collisions at √sNN=5.02 TeV

) distributions of primary charged particles are measured in the pseudo-rapidity range

Charmonium and e+e-pair photoproduction at mid-rapidity in ultra-peripheral Pb-Pb collisions at √sNN = 2.76 Tev

|\eta|<0.8