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  • Letter
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Creation of quark–gluon plasma droplets with three distinct geometries

Nature Physics volume 15, pages 214–220 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Experimental studies of the collisions of heavy nuclei at relativistic energies have established the properties of the quark–gluon plasma (QGP), a state of hot, dense nuclear matter in which quarks and gluons are not bound into hadrons1,2,3,4. In this state, matter behaves as a nearly inviscid fluid5 that efficiently translates initial spatial anisotropies into correlated momentum anisotropies among the particles produced, creating a common velocity field pattern known as collective flow. In recent years, comparable momentum anisotropies have been measured in small-system proton–proton (p+p) and proton–nucleus (p+A) collisions, despite expectations that the volume and lifetime of the medium produced would be too small to form a QGP. Here we report on the observation of elliptic and triangular flow patterns of charged particles produced in proton–gold (p+Au), deuteron–gold (d+Au) and helium–gold (3He+Au) collisions at a nucleon–nucleon centre-of-mass energy \(\sqrt {s_{{\mathrm{NN}}}}\) = 200 GeV. The unique combination of three distinct initial geometries and two flow patterns provides unprecedented model discrimination. Hydrodynamical models, which include the formation of a short-lived QGP droplet, provide the best simultaneous description of these measurements.

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Fig. 1: Average system eccentricities from a Monte Carlo (MC) Glauber model and hydrodynamic evolution of small systems.
Fig. 2: Measured vn(pT) in three collision systems.
Fig. 3: Measured vn(pT) in three collision systems compared with models.
Fig. 4: Measured v2(pT) in p+Au and d+Au collisions at the same event multiplicity.

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Data availability

All raw data for this study were collected using the PHENIX detector at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Data tables for the results reported in this paper and other findings of this study are publicly available on the PHENIX website (https://www.phenix.bnl.gov/phenix/WWW/info/data/ppg216_data.html) or from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the staff of the Collider-Accelerator and Physics Departments at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the staff of the other PHENIX participating institutions for their vital contributions. We acknowledge support from the Office of Nuclear Physics in the Office of Science of the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, Abilene Christian University Research Council, Research Foundation of SUNY, and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Vanderbilt University (USA), Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Japan), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientfico e Tecnológico and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Brazil), Natural Science Foundation of China (People’s Republic of China), Croatian Science Foundation and Ministry of Science and Education (Croatia), Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (Czech Republic), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique, and Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules (France), Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, and Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (Germany), NKFIH, EFOP, the New National Excellence Program (ÚNKP) and the J. Bolyai Research Scholarships (Hungary), Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Science and Technology (India), Israel Science Foundation (Israel), Basic Science Research Program through NRF of the Ministry of Education (Korea), Physics Department, Lahore University of Management Sciences (Pakistan), Ministry of Education and Science, Russian Academy of Sciences, Federal Agency of Atomic Energy (Russia), VR and Wallenberg Foundation (Sweden), the US Civilian Research and Development Foundation for the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union, the Hungarian American Enterprise Scholarship Fund, and the US–Israel Binational Science Foundation.

Author information

Author notes

  1. PHENIX Spokesperson: akiba@rcf.rhic.bnl.gov: Y. Akiba.

  2. Deceased: J. B. Choi.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    C. Aidala, V. Andrieux, C. Ayuso, N. A. Lewis, J. D. Osborn & M. J. Skoby

  2. RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, Wako, Saitama, Japan

    Y. Akiba, H. Asano, A. Enokizono, H. En’yo, Y. Goto, T. Hachiya, S. Miyasaka, S. Mizuno, T. Murakami, J. Murata, I. Nakagawa, H. Nakagomi, K. Nakano, S. Park, R. Seidl, T.-A. Shibata, T. Sumita & Y. Watanabe

  3. RIKEN BNL Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA

    Y. Akiba, S. Bathe, M. Connors, A. Deshpande, Y. Goto, T. Hachiya, G. Mitsuka, I. Nakagawa, R. Nouicer, R. Seidl, K. Tanida, X. R. Wang, Y. Watanabe & Y. L. Yamaguchi

  4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA

    M. Alfred

  5. KEK, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

    K. Aoki & K. Ozawa

  6. Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA

    N. Apadula, J. C. Hill, N. Hotvedt, J. G. Lajoie, A. Lebedev, S. H. Lee, C. A. Ogilvie, M. Patel, J. Perry, T. Rinn, M. Rosati, J. Runchey, A. Sen, M. Shimomura & A. Timilsina

  7. Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    H. Asano & T. Murakami

  8. Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA

    B. Azmoun, A. Bazilevsky, M. Chiu, G. David, E. J. Desmond, A. Franz, J. S. Haggerty, J. Huang, B. M. Johnson, E. Kistenev, D. Lynch, E. Mannel, J. T. Mitchell, D. P. Morrison, R. Nouicer, E. O’Brien, D. V. Perepelitsa, R. Petti, M. Phipps, C. Pinkenburg, R. P. Pisani, M. L. Purschke, T. Sakaguchi, I. V. Sourikova, S. P. Stoll, A. Sukhanov, M. J. Tannenbaum & C. L. Woody

  9. IHEP Protvino, State Research Center of Russian Federation, Institute for High Energy Physics, Protvino, Russia

    V. Babintsev, V. Bumazhnov, A. Denisov, A. Durum, I. Shein & A. Yanovich

  10. ELTE, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    A. Bagoly, M. Csanád, D. Kincses, B. Kurgyis, S. Lökös & M. I. Nagy

  11. Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

    N. S. Bandara & D. Kawall

  12. University of California-Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

    K. N. Barish, M. Beaumier, J. Bryslawskyj, R. S. Hollis, A. Iordanova, D. Kapukchyan, C. Kim, M. Mendoza, S. D. Rolnick, K. Sedgwick, R. Seto & L. Zou

  13. Baruch College, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    S. Bathe, J. Bryslawskyj, D. Richford, Z. Rowan & Z. Wang

  14. University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    R. Belmont, K. Hill, T. Koblesky, D. McGlinchey, J. L. Nagle, J. D. Orjuela Koop, D. V. Perepelitsa, S. Vazquez-Carson & P. Yin

  15. Saint Petersburg State Polytechnic University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    A. Berdnikov, Y. Berdnikov, D. Kotov, P. V. Radzevich, Y. Riabov, A. S. Safonov & S. Zharko

  16. National Research Center ‘Kurchatov Institute’, Moscow, Russia

    D. S. Blau, S. L. Fokin, A. V. Kazantsev, V. I. Manko, A. S. Nyanin, D. Yu. Peressounko & I. E. Yushmanov

  17. National Research Nuclear University, MEPhI, Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, Moscow, Russia

    D. S. Blau, V. Riabov, V. Samsonov & A. Taranenko

  18. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA

    M. Boer, M. L. Brooks, J. M. Durham, X. Jiang, M. J. Leitch, X. Li, S. H. Lim, M. X. Liu, M. McCumber, P. L. McGaughey, D. McGlinchey, C. L. Silva, M. Snowball, W. E. Sondheim & H. W. van Hecke

  19. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA

    J. S. Bok, V. Papavassiliou, S. F. Pate, G. D. N. Perera, X. R. Wang, C. Xu & H. Yu

  20. Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    C. Butler, M. Connors, T. Elder, H. Guragain, T. O. S. Haseler, X. He, A. Hodges, M. Jezghani, B. M. Johnson, M. Sarsour, S. Syed, R. Tieulent, C. P. Wong & L. Xue

  21. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    S. Campbell, C. Y. Chi & W. A. Zajc

  22. Nevis Laboratories, Irvington, NY, USA

    S. Campbell

  23. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, SUNY, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    V. Canoa Roman, R. Cervantes, N. Cronin, G. David, K. Dehmelt, A. Deshpande, A. Dion, D. Dixit, A. Drees, W. Fan, N. Feege, C. Gal, P. Garg, H. Ge, J. Hanks, T. K. Hemmick, B. V. Jacak, Z. Ji, V. Jorjadze, S. Karthas, V. Khachatryan, P. Kline, S. H. Lee, Y. H. Leung, D. E. Mihalik, N. Novitzky, S. Park, C. E. PerezLara, D. Sharma, J. Sun, S. Yalcin & Y. L. Yamaguchi

  24. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    I. J. Choi, F. Giordano, M. Grosse Perdekamp, D. S. Jumper, V.-R. Loggins, C. McKinney, P. Montuenga, M. Phipps & A. Sickles

  25. Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, Korea

    J. B. Choi & E.-J. Kim

  26. Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel

    Z. Citron, M. Dumancic, A. Milov, S. Tarafdar & I. Tserruya

  27. Eszterházy Károly University, Károly Róbert Campus, Gyöngyös, Hungary

    T. Csörgő, S. Lökös & T. Novák

  28. Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Wigner RCP, RMKI), Budapest, Hungary

    T. Csörgő, T. Novák & J. Sziklai

  29. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

    T. W. Danley, J. E. Frantz & A. Pun

  30. Abilene Christian University, Abilene, TX, USA

    M. S. Daugherity, H. F. Hamilton, D. Isenhower, C. L. Towell & R. S. Towell

  31. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    K. DeBlasio, D. E. Fields & G. J. Ottino

  32. Peking University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    L. D. Liu & H. Yu

  33. Yonsei University, IPAP, Seoul, Korea

    J. H. Do, J. H. Kang, Y. Kwon, S. Lee, S. H. Lim & T. Moon

  34. Collider-Accelerator Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA

    K. A. Drees, Y. I. Makdisi & A. Zelenski

  35. Physics Department, Rikkyo University, Toshima, Tokyo, Japan

    A. Enokizono, K. Kurita, H. Masuda, J. Murata & T. Nagashima

  36. Tomonaga Center for the History of the Universe, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

    S. Esumi, Y. Fukuda, M. Inaba, S. Kudo, S. Mizuno, H. Nakagomi, T. Niida, K. Ozawa, K. Sato, T. Shioya, T. Todoroki & H. Yamamoto

  37. Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA, USA

    B. Fadem & E. O. Lallow

  38. Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    M. Finger, M. Finger Jr & M. Slunečka

  39. Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    A. D. Frawley, J. Klatsky & K. L. Smith

  40. Czech Technical University, Prague 6, Czech Republic

    P. Gallus, R. Novotny, M. Tomášek, M. Virius & V. Vrba

  41. Department of Physics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

    P. Garg, B. K. Singh, C. P. Singh & V. Singh

  42. Department of Physics, Augustana University, Sioux Falls, SD, USA

    N. Grau

  43. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    S. V. Greene, S. Huang, S. I. Morrow, W. Peng, B. Schaefer, S. Tarafdar, J. Velkovska & Q. Xu

  44. Center for Nuclear Study, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan

    T. Gunji, H. Hamagaki & Y. S. Watanabe

  45. Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea

    K. I. Hahn & S. Y. Han

  46. Advanced Science Research Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Naka-gun, Ibaraki-ken, Japan

    S. Hasegawa, K. Imai, H. Sako, S. Sato & K. Tanida

  47. Hiroshima University, Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan

    K. Homma, T. Hoshino, K. Nagashima, K. Shigaki, T. Sugitate & Y. Ueda

  48. Korea University, Seoul, Korea

    B. Hong, C. Kim, M. H. Kim & J. H. Yoo

  49. Debrecen University, Debrecen, Hungary

    J. Imrek, K. Lovasz, T. Majoros, Z. Sun, G. Tarnai & B. Ujvari

  50. Nara Women’s University, Nara, Japan

    Y. Ito, M. Shimomura & A. Takeda

  51. PNPI, Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, Gatchina, Leningrad region, Russia

    D. Ivanishchev, A. Khanzadeev, D. Kotov, M. Malaev, V. Riabov, Y. Riabov & V. Samsonov

  52. IPN-Orsay, Univ. Paris-Sud, CNRS/IN2P3, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay, France

    D. Jouan

  53. Helsinki Institute of Physics and University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    D. J. Kim

  54. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

    M. Kim, J. S. Park, S. Park, K. Tanida & I. Yoon

  55. Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    M. Makek & N. Vukman

  56. University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    A. C. Mignerey & A. Sexton

  57. Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Bombay, India

    D. K. Mishra & P. Shukla

  58. Department of Physics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Oh-okayama, Meguro, Tokyo, Japan

    S. Miyasaka, K. Nagai, K. Nakano & T.-A. Shibata

  59. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    C. Nattrass, K. F. Read, B. K. Schmoll, A. Sen & S. P. Sorensen

  60. Department of Physics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    A. Oskarsson & D. Silvermyr

  61. Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    V. Pantuev

  62. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    K. F. Read & P. W. Stankus

  63. Chemistry Department, Stony Brook University, SUNY, Stony Brook, New York, NY, USA

    D. Reynolds

  64. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA

    R. A. Soltz

  65. IPNL, CNRS/IN2P3, Université Lyon, Villeurbanne, France

    R. Tieulent

  66. Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague , Czech Republic

    V. Vrba

Consortia

PHENIX Collaboration

  • C. Aidala
  • , Y. Akiba
  • , M. Alfred
  • , V. Andrieux
  • , K. Aoki
  • , N. Apadula
  • , H. Asano
  • , C. Ayuso
  • , B. Azmoun
  • , V. Babintsev
  • , A. Bagoly
  • , N. S. Bandara
  • , K. N. Barish
  • , S. Bathe
  • , A. Bazilevsky
  • , M. Beaumier
  • , R. Belmont
  • , A. Berdnikov
  • , Y. Berdnikov
  • , D. S. Blau
  • , M. Boer
  • , J. S. Bok
  • , M. L. Brooks
  • , J. Bryslawskyj
  • , V. Bumazhnov
  • , C. Butler
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Contributions

All PHENIX collaboration members contributed to the publication of these results in a variety of roles including detector construction, data collection, data processing, and analysis. A subset of collaboration members prepared this manuscript, and all authors had the opportunity to review the final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to J. L. Nagle.

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PHENIX Collaboration. Creation of quark–gluon plasma droplets with three distinct geometries. Nat. Phys. 15, 214–220 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0360-0

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