Measurements at forward rapidity of elliptic flow of charged hadrons and open-heavy-flavor muons in Au+Au collisions at √𝑠𝑁⁢𝑁=200GeV

Abstract

We present the first forward-rapidity measurements of elliptic anisotropy of open-heavy-flavor muons at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The measurements are based on data samples of Au+Au collisions at √𝑠𝑁⁢𝑁=200GeV collected by the PHENIX experiment in 2014 and 2016 with integrated luminosity of 14.5nb−1. The measurements are performed in the pseudorapidity range 1.2<|𝜂|<2 and cover transverse momenta 1<𝑝𝑇<4GeV/𝑐. The elliptic flow of charged hadrons as a function of transverse momentum is also measured in the same kinematic range. We observe significant elliptic flow for both charged hadrons and heavy-flavor muons. The results show clear mass ordering of elliptic flow of light- and heavy-flavor particles. The magnitude of the measured 𝑣2 is comparable to that in the midrapidity region. This indicates that there is no strong longitudinal dependence in the quark-gluon-plasma evolution between midrapidity and the rapidity range of this measurement at √𝑠𝑁⁢𝑁=200GeV.