Anisotropic flow measurements in STAR at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

Abstract

The goal of heavy ion physics is to study nuclear matter under conditions of extreme temperature and density. Anisotropic flow, which measures the particle azimuthal correlations with respect to the reaction plane, provides the information on the early stages of the created system and are sensitive to the degree of thermalization. In this thesis, the second and the fourth harmonic coefficients of anisotropic flow are studied as function of transverse momentum, centrality, pseudorapidity and particle species in Au+Au collisions at the center of mass energy 200 GeV and 62.4 GeV per nucleon. The detailed measurements show the signs of incomplete thermalization.