Studies of three-particle correlations and reaction-plane correlators from STAR

Abstract

We present STAR measurements of various harmonics of three-particle correlations in $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV Au+Au collisions at RHIC. The quantity $\langle\cos(m\phi_1+n\phi_2-(m+n)\phi_3)\rangle$ is measured for inclusive charged particles for different harmonics $m$ and $n$ as a function of collision centrality, transverse momentum $p_T$ and relative pseudorapidity $\Delta\eta$. These observables provide detailed information on global event properties like correlations between event planes of different harmonics and are particularly sensitive to the expansion dynamics of the matter produced in the collisions. We compare our measurements to different viscous hydrodynamic models. We argue that these measurements probe the three-dimensional structure of the initial state and provide unique ways to constrain the transport parameters involved in hydrodynamic modeling of heavy-ion collisions.