Measurement of Elliptic Flow of J/ψ Mesons in 200 GeV Gold Ion Collisions at RHIC

Abstract

At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), nuclei are collided together at relativistic speeds, producing a state of matter comprised of deconfined quarks and gluons, the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). This rare state of matter is predicted to occur at extremely high temperatures and densities. Such conditions existed in the earliest moments of our Universe just microseconds after the Big Bang. The QGP has been found to exhibit a nearly perfect fluid behavior and has been the subject of intense study and experimentation in the field of heavy-ion physics over the last several decades. The near perfect fluidity of the QGP is observed as strong correlations between particles produced in nuclear collisions. Presently, the detailed interactions of the heavy quarks in the QGP medium are under investigation. We report the first measurement of the azimuthal anisotropy of J/ψ at forward rapidity in Au+Au collisions at 200 GeV at RHIC. The data were collected by the PHENIX experiment in 2014 and 2016 with integrated luminosity of 14.5 nb-1. The second Fourier coefficient (v2) of the azimuthal distribution of J/ψ is determined as a function of the transverse momentum (pT) using the event-plane method. We find that in all cases the values of v2(pT), which quantify the elliptic flow of J/ψ, are consistent with zero. The results are consistent with measurements at midrapidity, indicating no significant elliptic flow of the J/ψ within the QGP medium at collision energies of 200 GeV.