Azimuthal charged-particle correlations and possible local strong parity violation.

Journal: Physical Review Letters
Published:
Abstract

Parity-odd domains, corresponding to nontrivial topological solutions of the QCD vacuum, might be created during relativistic heavy-ion collisions. These domains are predicted to lead to charge separation of quarks along the system's orbital momentum axis. We investigate a three-particle azimuthal correlator which is a P even observable, but directly sensitive to the charge separation effect. We report measurements of charged hadrons near center-of-mass rapidity with this observable in Au + Au and Cu + Cu collisions at square root of s(NN) = 200 GeV using the STAR detector. A signal consistent with several expectations from the theory is detected. We discuss possible contributions from other effects that are not related to parity violation.

Authors
B Abelev, M Aggarwal, Z Ahammed, A Alakhverdyants, B Anderson, D Arkhipkin, G Averichev, J Balewski, O Barannikova, L Barnby, S Baumgart, D Beavis, R Bellwied, F Benedosso, M Betancourt, R Betts, A Bhasin, A Bhati, H Bichsel, J Bielcik, J Bielcikova, B Biritz, L Bland, I Bnzarov, B Bonner, J Bouchet, E Braidot, A Brandin, A Bridgeman, E Bruna, S Bueltmann, T Burton, X Cai, H Caines, M Calderón De La Barca Sánchez, O Catu, D Cebra, R Cendejas, M Cervantes, Z Chajecki, P Chaloupka, S Chattopadhyay, H Chen, J Chen, J Chen, J Cheng, M Cherney, A Chikanian, K Choi, W Christie, P Chung, R Clarke, M Codrington, R Corliss, T Cormier, M Cosentino, J Cramer, H Crawford, D Das, S Dash, M Daugherity, L De Silva, T Dedovich, M Dephillips, A Derevschikov, R Derradi De Souza, L Didenko, P Djawotho, V Dzhordzhadze, S Dogra, X Dong, J Drachenberg, J Draper, J Dunlop, M Dutta Mazumdar, L Efimov, E Elhalhuli, M Elnimr, J Engelage, G Eppley, B Erazmus, M Estienne, L Eun, P Fachini, R Fatemi, J Fedorisin, A Feng, P Filip, E Finch, V Fine, Y Fisyak, C Gagliardi, D Gangadharan, M Ganti, E Garcia Solis, A Geromitsos, F Geurts, V Ghazikhanian, P Ghosh, Y Gorbunov, A Gordon, O Grebenyuk, D Grosnick, B Grube, S Guertin, K S Guimaraes, A Gupta, N Gupta, W Guryn, B Haag, T Hallman, A Hamed, J Harris, M Heinz, S Heppelmann, A Hirsch, E Hjort, A Hoffman, G Hoffmann, D Hofman, R Hollis, H Huang, T Humanic, L Huo, G Igo, A Iordanova, P Jacobs, W Jacobs, P Jakl, C Jena, F Jin, C Jones, P Jones, J Joseph, E Judd, S Kabana, K Kajimoto, K Kang, J Kapitan, K Kauder, D Keane, A Kechechyan, D Kettler, V Khodyrev, D Kikola, J Kiryluk, A Kisiel, S Klein, A Knospe, A Kocoloski, D Koetke, J Konzer, M Kopytine, I Koralt, W Korsch, L Kotchenda, V Kouchpil, P Kravtsov, V Kravtsov, K Krueger, M Krus, L Kumar, P Kurnadi, M A Lamont, J Landgraf, S Lapointe, J Lauret, A Lebedev, R Lednicky, C-h Lee, J Lee, W Leight, M Levine, C Li, N Li, Y Li, G Lin, S Lindenbaum, M Lisa, F Liu, H Liu, J Liu, L Liu, T Ljubicic, W Llope, R Longacre, W Love, Y Lu, T Ludlam, G Ma, Y Ma, D Mahapatra, R Majka, O Mall, L Mangotra, R Manweiler, S Margetis, C Markert, H Masui, H Matis, Yu Matulenko, D Mcdonald, T Mcshane, A Meschanin, R Milner, N Minaev, S Mioduszewski, A Mischke, B Mohanty, D Morozov, M Munhoz, B Nandi, C Nattrass, T Nayak, J Nelson, P Netrakanti, M Ng, L Nogach, S Nurushev, G Odyniec, A Ogawa, H Okada, V Okorokov, D Olson, M Pachr, B Page, S Pal, Y Pandit, Y Panebratsev, T Pawlak, T Peitzmann, V Perevoztchikov, C Perkins, W Peryt, S Phatak, P Pile, M Planinic, M Ploskon, J Pluta, D Plyku, N Poljak, A Poskanzer, B K Potukuchi, D Prindle, C Pruneau, N Pruthi, P Pujahari, J Putschke, R Raniwala, S Raniwala, R Ray, R Redwine, R Reed, A Ridiger, H Ritter, J Roberts, O Rogachevskiy, J Romero, A Rose, C Roy, L Ruan, M Russcher, R Sahoo, S Sakai, I Sakrejda, T Sakuma, S Salur, J Sandweiss, J Schambach, R Scharenberg, N Schmitz, J Seele, J Seger, I Selyuzhenkov, Y Semertzidis, P Seyboth, E Shahaliev, M Shao, M Sharma, S Shi, X-h Shi, E Sichtermann, F Simon, R Singaraju, M Skoby, N Smirnov, P Sorensen, J Sowinski, H Spinka, B Srivastava, T D Stanislaus, D Staszak, M Strikhanov, B Stringfellow, A Suaide, M Suarez, N Subba, M Sumbera, X Sun, Y Sun, Z Sun, B Surrow, T J Symons, A Szanto De Toledo, J Takahashi, A Tang, Z Tang, L Tarini, T Tarnowsky, D Thein, J Thomas, J Tian, A Timmins, S Timoshenko, D Tlusty, M Tokarev, V Tram, S Trentalange, R Tribble, O Tsai, J Ulery, T Ullrich, D Underwood, G Van Buren, G Van Nieuwenhuizen, J Vanfossen, R Varma, G M Vasconcelos, A Vasiliev, F Videbaek, Y Viyogi, S Vokal, S Voloshin, M Wada, M Walker, F Wang, G Wang, H Wang, J Wang, Q Wang, X Wang, X Wang, Y Wang, G Webb, J Webb, G Westfall, C Whitten, H Wieman, S Wissink, R Witt, Y Wu, W Xie, N Xu, Q Xu, Y Xu, Z Xu, Y Yang, P Yepes, K Yip, I-k Yoo, Q Yue, M Zawisza, H Zbroszczyk, W Zhan, S Zhang, W Zhang, X Zhang, Y Zhang, Z Zhang, Y Zhao, C Zhong, J Zhou, X Zhu, R Zoulkarneev, Y Zoulkarneeva, J Zuo