Directed flow at midrapidity in heavy-ion collisions

Understand

It was recently shown that fluctuations in the initial geometry of a heavy ion collision generally result in a dipole asymmetry of the distribution of outgoing particles.

• This asymmetry, unlike the usual directed flow, is expected to be present at a wide range of rapidity -- including midrapidity.
• First evidence of this phenomenon can be seen in recent two-particle correlation data by STAR, providing the last element necessary to quantitatively describe long-range dihadron correlations.
• We extract differential directed flow from these data and propose a new direct measurement.