Separation of flow from chiral magnetic effect in U+U collisions using spectator asymmetry

Understand

We demonstrate that the prolate shape of the Uranium nucleus generates anti-correlation between spectator asymmetry and initial state ellipticity of the collision zone, providing a way to constrain the initial event shape in U+U collisions.

• As an application, we show that this can be used to separate the background contribution due to flow from the signals of chiral magnetic effect.