Two-particle Azimuthal Correlations of High-pT Charged Hadrons at the CERN SPS

Understand

Two-particle azimuthal correlations of high-pT hadrons can serve as a probe of interactions of partons with the dense medium produced in high-energy heavy-ion collisions.

• First NA49 results on such correlations are presented for central and mid-central Pb+Pb collisions at 158A GeV beam energy, for different centrality bins and charge combinations of trigger and associate particles.
• These results feature a flattened away-side peak in the most central collisions, which is consistent with expectations of the medium-interaction scenario.
• A comparison with CERES Pb+Au results at the same energy, as well as with PHENIX Au+Au results at the top RHIC energy, is provided.