This thesis presents the systematic analysis of azimuthal distributions of identified charged particles produced in Au+Au collisions at 11.5 A·GeV/c at the AGS measured with respect to the reaction plane. A Fourier expansion is used to describe the azimuthal anisotropy in particle production. Directed flow of protons, deuterons, pi+/-, K+/- and antiprotons is presented as a function of transverse momentum for different particle rapidities and collision centralities. Directed flow of protons and that of deuterons are well described by a simple sideward moving and radially expanding thermal source model; the observed behavior of the directed flow of pi+/- indicates the interplay between shadowing and expansion; direct flow of K + and K- is observed to be anti-correlated to that of protons at low pt, implying that the role of absorption and rescattering is significant for kaons in the dense nuclear medium; the first observation of a large "antiflow" signal for antiprotons suggests that a strong annihilation process occurs in heavy-ion collisions at the AGS. The experimental results are compared to the predictions of the event generator RQMD (version 2.3) in both the mean-field and cascade modes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.35689 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Dai, Yi, 1964- |
| Contributors | Barrette, Jean (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Physics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001656216, proquestno: NQ50140, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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