Flow analysis with cumulants : Direct calculations

Abstract

Anisotropic flow measurements in heavy-ion collisions provide important information on the properties of hot and dense matter. These measurements are based on analysis of azimuthal correlations and might be biased by contributions from correlations that are not related to the initial geometry, so-called nonflow. To improve anisotropic flow measurements, advanced methods based on multiparticle correlations (cumulants) have been developed to suppress nonflow contribution. These multiparticle correlations can be calculated by looping over all possible multiplets, however, this quickly becomes prohibitively CPU intensive. Therefore, the most used technique for cumulant calculations is based on generating functions. This method involves approximations, and has its own biases, which complicates the interpretation of the results. In this paper we present a new exact method for direct calculations of multiparticle cumulants using moments of the flow vectors.