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Peter Steinberg

Publications and source records attributed to Peter Steinberg.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2025

Upgrades of the ATLAS Zero Degree Calorimeter System for Run 3 at the Large Hadron Collider

Experimental studies of ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) depend crucially on Zero Degree Calorimeters (ZDCs) that measure neutrons produced at near-beam rapidity in nucleus-nucleus collisions. In hadronic nuclear collisions these neutrons are mainly spectator neutrons, those that do not scatter from opposing nucleons during the collision. As a result, the ZDCs provide a vital probe of heavy ion collision geometry. The ZDCs are also essential in the study of ultra-peripheral collisions that are initiated by photons associated with the electric fields of one or both nuclei. Coherent photon emission typically leaves the photon emitter intact, making the observation of no ZDC signal, on one or both sides, a tag of such processes. The ATLAS ZDCs, built prior to Run 1 were substantially upgraded for LHC Run 3. The primary upgrades included replacement of the quartz Cherenkov radiator with $\text{H}_2$-doped fused silica rods; installation of fast air-core signal cables between the ZDC and the ATLAS USA15 cavern; new LED-based calibration system; and new electronics implemented for readout and fully-digital triggering. The ZDCs were also augmented with new "Reaction Plane Detectors" (RPDs) designed to measure the transverse centroid of multi-neutron showers to allow event-by-event reconstruction of the directed-flow plane in nuclear collisions. The Run~3 ZDC detectors, including the RPDs, are described in detail with emphasis on aspects that are new for Run~3.

physics.ins-det↗
arXiv2020

New opportunities at the photon energy frontier

Ultra-peripheral collisions (UPCs) involving heavy ions and protons are the energy frontier for photon-mediated interactions. UPC photons can be used for many purposes, including probing low-$x$ gluons via photoproduction of dijets and vector mesons, probes of beyond-standard-model processes, such as those enabled by light-by-light scattering, and studies of two-photon production of the Higgs.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2020

Photonuclear and Two-photon Interactions at High-Energy Nuclear Colliders

Ultra-peripheral collisions of heavy ions and protons are the energy frontier for electromagnetic interactions. Both photonuclear and two-photon collisions are studied, at collision energies that are far higher than are available elsewhere. In this review, we will discuss physics topics that can be addressed with UPCs, including nuclear shadowing and nuclear structure and searches for beyond-standard-model physics.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2012

Measurement of high p_T isolated prompt photons in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Prompt photons are a powerful tool to study heavy ion collisions. Their production rates provide access to the initial state parton distribution functions and also provide a means to calibrate the expected energy of jets that are produced in the medium. The ATLAS detector measures photons with its hermetic, longitudinally segmented calorimeter, which gives excellent spatial and energy resolutions, and detailed information about the shower shape of each measured photon. This provides significant rejection against the expected background from the decays of neutral pions in jets. Rejection against jet fragmentation products is further enhanced by requiring candidate photons to be isolated. First results on the spectra of isolated prompt photons from a dataset with an integrated luminosity of approximately 0.13 nb^-1 of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=2.76 TeV are shown as a function of transverse momentum and centrality. The measured spectra are compared to expectations from perturbative QCD calculations.

hep-ex↗
arXiv2012

Strongly Correlated Quantum Fluids: Ultracold Quantum Gases, Quantum Chromodynamic Plasmas, and Holographic Duality

Strongly correlated quantum fluids are phases of matter that are intrinsically quantum mechanical, and that do not have a simple description in terms of weakly interacting quasi-particles. Two systems that have recently attracted a great deal of interest are the quark-gluon plasma, a plasma of strongly interacting quarks and gluons produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions, and ultracold atomic Fermi gases, very dilute clouds of atomic gases confined in optical or magnetic traps. These systems differ by more than 20 orders of magnitude in temperature, but they were shown to exhibit very similar hydrodynamic flow. In particular, both fluids exhibit a robustly low shear viscosity to entropy density ratio which is characteristic of quantum fluids described by holographic duality, a mapping from strongly correlated quantum field theories to weakly curved higher dimensional classical gravity. This review explores the connection between these fields, and it also serves as an introduction to the Focus Issue of New Journal of Physics on Strongly Correlated Quantum Fluids: from Ultracold Quantum Gases to QCD Plasmas. The presentation is made accessible to the general physics reader and includes discussions of the latest research developments in all three areas.

hep-th↗
arXiv2011

Recent Heavy Ion Results with the ATLAS Detector at the LHC

Results are presented from the ATLAS collaboration from the 2010 LHC heavy ion run, during which nearly 10 inverse microbarns of luminosity were delivered. Soft physics results include charged particle multiplicities and collective flow. The charged particle multiplicity, which tracks initial state entropy production, increases by a factor of two relative to the top RHIC energy, with a centrality dependence very similar to that already measured at RHIC. Measurements of elliptic flow out to large transverse momentum also show similar results to what was measured at RHIC, but no significant pseudorapidity dependence. Extensions of these measurements to higher harmonics have also been made, and can be used to explain structures in the two-particle correlation functions that had long been attributed to jet-medium interactions. New hard probe measurements include single muons, jets and high $p_T$ hadrons. Single muons at high momentum are used to extract the yield of $W^{\pm}$ bosons and are found to be consistent within statistical uncertainties with binary collision scaling. Conversely, jets are found to be suppressed in central events by a factor of two relative to peripheral events, with no significant dependence on the jet energy. Fragmentation functions are also found to be the same in central and peripheral events. Finally, charged hadrons have been measured out to 30 GeV, and their centrality dependence relative to peripheral events is similar to that found for jets.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2009

Soft Physics from RHIC to LHC

The RHIC program was intended to identify and study the quark-gluon plasma formed in the collision of heavy nuclei. The discovery of the "perfect liquid" is an essential step towards the understanding of the medium formed in these collisions. Much of data relevant to this was provided by the study of "soft" observables, which involve many particles of low momentum produced in nearly every event, rather than high momentum particles produced in rare events. The main results related to soft physics at RHIC are discussed, as well as their implications for the physics of the LHC heavy ion program.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2007

Inclusive Pseudorapidity Distributions in p(d)+A Collisions Modeled With Shifted Rapidity Distributions

We study the recent PHOBOS data on the pseudorapidity density of inclusive charged particles in centrality-binned d+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. It appears that one can understand the increasing forward-backward asymmetry in the data by assuming that the entire distribution "shifts" backwards in rapidity according to the initial-state kinematics, while the total multiplicity scales linearly with Npart/2. Two models are explored, both of which achieve a reasonable description of the available data for rapidities sufficiently far from the pro jectiles (|eta|< 3 at the top RHIC energy). One model uses PYTHIA as the underlying distribution, to allow a straightforward mapping of a rapidity shift back to pseudorapidity space. The other model is a simple analytic calculation based on functions inspired by Landau's hydrodynamical model. The apparent success of these simple pictures to describe the bulk of particle production over |eta|< 3 suggests that collective effects may be present even in the "small" systems created in p+p and d+Au reactions, active over the full rapidity range. The relationship between this and other theoretical approaches are discussed.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2007

Entropy Production at High Energy and mu_B

The systematics of bulk entropy production in experimental data on A+A, p+p and e+e- interactions at high energies and large mu_B is discussed. It is proposed that scenarios with very early thermalization, such as Landau's hydrodynamical model, capture several essential features of the experimental results. It is also pointed out that the dynamics of systems which reach the hydrodynamic regime give similar multiplicities and angular distributions as those calculated in weak-coupling approximations (e.g. pQCD) over a wide range of beam energies. Finally, it is shown that the dynamics of baryon stopping are relevant to the physics of total entropy production, explaining why A+A and e+e- multiplicities are different at low beam energies.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2007

Hotter, Denser, Faster, Smaller...and Nearly-Perfect: What's the matter at RHIC?

The experimental and theoretical status of the ``near perfect fluid'' at RHIC is discussed. While the hydrodynamic paradigm for understanding collisions at RHIC is well-established, there remain many important open questions to address in order to understand its relevance and scope. It is also a crucial issue to understand how the early equilibration is achieved, requiring insight into the active degrees of freedom at early times.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2007

Glauber Modeling in High Energy Nuclear Collisions

This is a review of the theoretical background, experimental techniques, and phenomenology of what is called the "Glauber Model" in relativistic heavy ion physics. This model is used to calculate "geometric" quantities, which are typically expressed as impact parameter (b), number of participating nucleons (N_part) and number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions (N_coll). A brief history of the original Glauber model is presented, with emphasis on its development into the purely classical, geometric picture that is used for present-day data analyses. Distinctions are made between the "optical limit" and Monte Carlo approaches, which are often used interchangably but have some essential differences in particular contexts. The methods used by the four RHIC experiments are compared and contrasted, although the end results are reassuringly similar for the various geometric observables. Finally, several important RHIC measurements are highlighted that rely on geometric quantities, estimated from Glauber calculations, to draw insight from experimental observables. The status and future of Glauber modeling in the next generation of heavy ion physics studies is briefly discussed.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2005

Thoughts on Heavy Quark Production

Various aspects of heavy flavor production in heavy ion collisions in the context of elementary collisions are reviewed. The interplay between theory in experiment in $\epem$ and $\pbarp$ data is been found to be non-trivial, even with new NLO calculations. Quarkonium suppression in p+A and A+A show puzzling features, apparently connected to features of inclusive particle production. Open charm is found to scale as expected for a hard process, but strangeness is also found to share these features. These features contribute to heavy flavor as a interesting probe of strong interactions.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2004

Bulk Dynamics in Heavy Ion Collisions

The features of heavy ion collisions that suggest the relevance of collective dynamics, as opposed to mere superpositions of nucleon-nucleon or even parton-parton collisions, are reviewed. The surprise of these studies is that bulk observables are far simpler than typical dynamical models of nucleus-nucleus collisions would imply. These features are shown to have a natural interpretation in terms of statistical-hydrodynamical models. The relevance of hydrodynamics to heavy ion collisions, coupled with the various similarities of the heavy ion data with that of more elementary collisions, raises very basic questions about its relevance to smaller systems.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2004

The Landscape of Particle Production: Results from PHOBOS

Recent results from the PHOBOS experiment at RHIC are presented, both from Au+Au collisions from the 2001 run and p+p and d+Au collisions from 2003. The centrality dependence of the total charged particle multiplicity in p+p and d+Au show features, such as Npart-scaling and limiting fragmentation, similar to p+A collisions at lower energies. Multiparticle physics in Au+Au is found to be local in (pseudo)rapidity, both when observed by HBT correlations and by forward-backward pseudorapidity correlations. The shape of elliptic flow in Au+Au, measured over the full range of pseudorapidity, appears to have a very weak centrality dependence. Identified particle ratios in d+Au reactions show little difference between the shape of proton and anti-proton spectra, while the absolute yields show an approximate m_T scaling.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2004

Landau Hydrodynamics and RHIC Phenomena

The basic physical assumptions and results of Landau's hydrodynamic model of particle production are reviewed. It is argued that these results have a substantial descriptive and predictive power in strong-interaction phenomenology, including recent RHIC data.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2002

Universal Behavior of Charged Particle Production in Heavy Ion Collisions

The PHOBOS experiment at RHIC has measured the multiplicity of primary charged particles as a function of centrality and pseudorapidity in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 19.6, 130 and 200 GeV. Two kinds of universal behavior are observed in charged particle production in heavy ion collisions. The first is that forward particle production, over a range of energies, follows a universal limiting curve with a non-trivial centrality dependence. The second arises from comparisons with pp/pbar-p and e+e- data. N_tot/(N_part/2) in nuclear collisions at high energy scales with sqrt(s) in a similar way as N_tot in e+e- collisions and has a very weak centrality dependence. This feature may be related to a reduction in the leading particle effect due to the multiple collisions suffered per participant in heavy ion collisions.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2002

Universal Behavior of Charged Particle Production in Heavy Ion Collisions at RHIC Energies

The PHOBOS experiment at RHIC has measured the multiplicity of primary charged particles as a function of centrality and pseudorapidity in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 19.6, 130 and 200 GeV. Two kinds of universal behavior are observed in charged particle production in heavy ion collisions. The first is that forward particle production, over a range of energies, follows a universal limiting curve with a non-trivial centrality dependence. The second arises from comparisons with pp/pbar-p and e+e- data. N_tot/(N_part/2) in nuclear collisions at high energy scales with sqrt(s) in a similar way as N_tot in e+e- collisions and has a very weak centrality dependence. This feature may be related to a reduction in the leading particle effect due to the multiple collisions suffered per participant in heavy ion collisions.

nucl-ex↗