arXiv subjects

F. Prino

Publications and source records attributed to F. Prino.

23 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2010

Langevin dynamics of heavy flavors in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

We study the stochastic dynamics of c and b quarks, produced in hard initial processes, in the hot medium created after the collision of two relativistic heavy ions. This is done through the numerical solution of the relativistic Langevin equation. The latter requires the knowledge of the friction and diffusion coefficients, whose microscopic evaluation is performed treating separately the contribution of soft and hard collisions. The evolution of the background medium is described by ideal/viscous hydrodynamics. Below the critical temperature the heavy quarks are converted into hadrons, whose semileptonic decays provide single-electron spectra to be compared with the current experimental data measured at RHIC. We focus on the nuclear modification factor R_AA and on the elliptic-flow coefficient v_2, getting, for sufficiently large p_T, a reasonable agreement.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2010

Heavy-quark Langevin dynamics and single-electron spectra in nucleus-nucleus collision

The stochastic dynamics of heavy quarks in the fireball produced in heavy-ion collisions is followed through numerical simulations based on the Langevin equation. The modification of the final p_T spectra (R_AA) of c and b quarks, hadrons and single-electrons with respect to pp collisions is studied. The transport coefficients are evaluated treating separately the contribution of soft and hard collisions. The initial heavy-quark spectra are generated according to NLO-pQCD, accounting for nuclear effects through recent nPDFs. The evolution of the medium is obtained from the output of two hydro-codes (ideal and viscous). The heavy-quark fragmentation into hadrons and their final semileptonic decays are implemented according to up to date experimental data. A comparison with RHIC data for non-photonic electron spectra is given.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2010

Charge collection in the Silicon Drift Detectors of the ALICE experiment

A detailed study of charge collection efficiency has been performed on the Silicon Drift Detectors (SDD) of the ALICE experiment. Three different methods to study the collected charge as a function of the drift time have been implemented. The first approach consists in measuring the charge at different injection distances moving an infrared laser by means of micrometric step motors. The second method is based on the measurement of the charge injected by the laser at fixed drift distance and varying the drift field, thus changing the drift time. In the last method, the measurement of the charge deposited by atmospheric muons is used to study the charge collection efficiency as a function of the drift time. The three methods gave consistent results and indicated that no charge loss during the drift is observed for the sensor types used in 99% of the SDD modules mounted on the ALICE Inner Tracking System. The atmospheric muons have also been used to test the effect of the zero-suppression applied to reduce the data size by erasing the counts in cells not passing the thresholds for noise removal. As expected, the zero suppression introduces a dependence of the reconstructed charge as a function of drift time because it cuts the signal in the tails of the electron clouds enlarged by diffusion effects. These measurements allowed also to validate the correction for this effect extracted from detailed Monte Carlo simulations of the detector response and applied in the offline data reconstruction.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2009

J/psi azimuthal anisotropy relative to the reaction plane in Pb-Pb collisions at 158 GeV per nucleon

The J/$ψ$ azimuthal distribution relative to the reaction plane has been measured by the NA50 experiment in Pb-Pb collisions at 158 GeV/nucleon. Various physical mechanisms related to charmonium dissociation in the medium created in the heavy ion collision are expected to introduce an anisotropy in the azimuthal distribution of the observed J/$ψ$ mesons at SPS energies. Hence, the measurement of J/$ψ$ elliptic anisotropy, quantified by the Fourier coefficient v$_2$ of the J/$ψ$ azimuthal distribution relative to the reaction plane, is an important tool to constrain theoretical models aimed at explaining the anomalous J/$ψ$ suppression observed in Pb-Pb collisions. We present the measured J/$ψ$ yields in different bins of azimuthal angle relative to the reaction plane, as well as the resulting values of the Fourier coefficient v$_{2}$ as a function of the collision centrality and of the J/$ψ$ transverse momentum. The reaction plane has been estimated from the azimuthal distribution of the neutral transverse energy detected in an electromagnetic calorimeter. The analysis has been performed on a data sample of about 100 000 events, distributed in five centrality or p$_{\rm T}$ sub-samples. The extracted v$_{2}$ values are significantly larger than zero for non-central collisions and are seen to increase with p$_{\rm T}$.

nucl-ex↗

arXiv2007

Charged particle pseudorapidity distributions from SPS to LHC

Pseudorapidity distributions of charged particles produced in heavy ion collisions are a powerful tool to characterize the global properties of the created system. They have been measured in a wide range of energies at the GSI, AGS, SPS and RHIC accelerators and will be one of the first measurements at ALICE at the LHC. The various analysis techniques developed by SPS and RHIC experiments are reviewed and the presently available results from SPS and RHIC are presented, focusing in particular on the scaling of charged particle yield with centrality and with center-of-mass energy. Finally the perspectives for the multiplicity measurement in the ALICE experiment at the LHC are discussed.

nucl-ex↗