Department of Physics and Astronomy
Nuclear and Particle Physics Seminar
Monday, November 8
12:30pm-1:30pm
Stevenson Center, Room 6333
Dipali Pal
Vanderbilt University
Phi Meson Production in AuAu and dAu Collisions at RHIC
High energy heavy ion collisions at RHIC produce a highly excited and compressed partonic matter. Such conditions are favorable for the deconfinement phase transition to the Quark-Gluon Plasma. The phi meson is a significant probe to measure the medium induced effects, strangeness enhancement and particle production mechanism in relativistic heavy ion collisions. All of these are very sensitive to the existence of the quark-gluon phase.
We shall present the first results of phi meson production in the K+K- and e+e- decay channels at RHIC as measured at mid-rapidity by the PHENIX detector. First, we shall show the results of phi meson analysis in the K+K- decay channel in Au-Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. Then, we shall discuss the phi meson measurements in d-Au collisions in both K+K- and e+e- channels. Finally, a comparison of Au-Au (hot and dense matter) and d-Au (cold nuclear matter) results will be presented.