Measurements of collective flow and two-particle correlations have proven to be effective tools for understanding the properties of the system produced in ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Accurate modeling of the initial conditions of a heavy ion collision is crucial in the interpretation of these results. The anisotropic shape of the initial geometry of heavy ion collisions with finite impact parameter leads to an anisotropic particle production in the azimuthal direction through collective flow of the produced medium. In "head-on" collisions of Copper nuclei at ultrarelativistic energies, the magnitude of this "elliptic flow" has been observed to be significantly large. This is understood to be due to fluctuations in the initial geometry which leads to a significant anisotropy even for most central Cu+Cu collisions. This thesis presents a phenomenological study of the effect of initial geometry fluctuations on two-particle correlations and an experimental measurement of the magnitude of elliptic flow fluctuations which is predicted to be large if initial geometry fluctuations are present. Two-particle correlation measurements in Au+Au collisions at the top RHIC energies have shown that after correction for contributions from elliptic flow, strong azimuthal correlation signals are present at A0 = 0 and A0 ~ 120. These correlation structures may be understood in terms of event-by-event fluctuations which result in a triangular anisotropy in the initial collision geometry of heavy ion collisions, which in turn leads to a triangular anisotropy in particle production. It is observed that similar correlation structures are observed in A Multi-Phase Transport (AMPT) model and are, indeed, found to be driven by the triangular anisotropy in the initial collision geometry. Therefore "triangular flow" may be the appropriate description of these correlation structures in data. The measurement of elliptic flow fluctuations is complicated by the contributions of statistical fluctuations and other two-particle correlations (non-flow correlations) to the observed fluctuations in azimuthal particle anisotropy. New experimental techniques, which crucially rely on the uniquely large coverage of the PHOBOS detector at RHIC, are developed to quantify and correct for these contributions. Relative elliptic flow fluctuations of approximately 30-40% are observed in 6-45% most central Au+Au collisions at s NN= 200 GeV. These results are consistent with the predicted initial geometry fluctuations.

This book highlights the discussions by renown researchers on questions emerged during transition from the relativistic heavy-ion collider (RHIC) to the future electron ion collider (EIC). Over the past two decades, the RHIC has provided a vast amount of data over a wide range of the center of mass energies. What are the scientific priorities, after RHIC is shut down and turned to the future EIC? What should be the future focuses of the high-energy nuclear collisions? What are thermodynamic properties of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) at large baryon density? Where is the phase boundary between quark-gluon-plasma and hadronic matter at high baryon density? How does one make connections from thermodynamics learned in high-energy nuclear collisions to astrophysical topics, to name few, the inner structure of compact stars, and perhaps more interestingly, the dynamical processes of the merging of neutron stars? While most particle physicists are interested in Dark Matter, we should focus on the issues of Visible Matter! Multiple heavy-ion accelerator complexes are under construction: NICA at JINR (4 ~ 11 GeV), FAIR at GSI (2 ~ 4.9 GeV SIS100), HIAF at IMP (2 ~ 4 GeV). In addition, the heavy-ion collision has been actively discussed at the J-PARC. The book is a collective work of top researchers from the field where some of the above-mentioned basic questions will be addressed. We believe that answering those questions will certainly advance our understanding of the phase transition in early universe as well as its evolution that leads to today's world of nature.

Modern physics is challenged by the puzzle of quark confinement in a strongly interacting system. High-energy heavy-ion collisions can experimentally provide the high energy density required to generate Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), a deconfined state of quark matter. For this purpose, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory has been constructed and is currently taking data. Anisotropic flow, an anisotropy of the azimuthal distribution of particles with respect to the reaction plane, sheds light on the early partonic system and is not distorted by the post-partonic stages of the collision. Non-flow effects (azimuthal correlations not related to the reaction plane orientation) are difficult to remove from the analysis, and can lead us astray from the true interpretation of anisotropic flow. To reduce the sensitivity of our analysis to non-flow effects, we aim to reconstruct the reaction plane from the sideward deflection of spectator neutrons detected by the Zero Degree Calorimeter (ZDC). It can be shown that the large rapidity gap between the spectator neutrons used to establish the reaction plane and the rapidity region of physics interest eliminates all of the known sources of non-flow correlations. In this project, we upgrade the ZDC to make it position-sensitive in the transverse plane, and utilize the spatial distribution of neutral fragments of the incident beams to determine the reaction plane. The 2004 and 2005 runs of RHIC have provided sufficient statistics to carry out a systematic analysis of azimuthal anisotropies as a function of observables like collision system (Au+Au and Cu+Cu), beam energy (62 GeV and 200GeV), impact parameter (centrality), particle type, etc. Directed flow is quantified by the first harmonic (v1) in the Fourier expansion of the particle's azimuthal distribution with respect to the reaction plane, and elliptic flow, by the second harmonic (v2). They carry information on the very early stages of the collision. For example, the variation of directed flow with rapidity in the central rapidity region is of special interest because it might reveal a signature of a possible QGP phase. This flow study using the 1st-order reaction plane (the reaction plane determined by directed flow) reconstructed using the ZDC-SMD has minimal, if any, influence from non-flow effects or effects from flow fluctuations. The experimental results can be compared with different theoretical model predictions such as AMPT, RQMD, UrQMD and hydrodynamic models. We can also use our flow results to test the hypothesis of limiting fragmentation - the effect whereby particle emission as a function of rapidity in the vicinity of beam rapidity appears unchanged over a wide range of beam energy.

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has provided its experiments with the most energetic nucleus-nucleus collisions ever achieved in a laboratory. These collisions allow for the study of the properties of nuclear matter at very high temperature and energy density, and may uncover new forms of matter created under such conditions. This thesis presents measurements of the elliptic flow amplitude, v2, in Au+Au collisions at RHIC's top center of mass energy of 200 GeV per nucleon pair. Elliptic flow is interesting as a probe of the dynamical evolution of the system formed in the collision. The elliptic flow dependences on transverse momentum, centrality, and pseudorapidity were measured using data collected by the PHOBOS detector during the 2001 RHIC run. The reaction plane of the collision was determined using the multiplicity detector, and the azimuthal angles of tracks reconstructed in the spectrometer were then correlated with the found reaction plane. The v2 values grow almost linearly with transverse momentum, up to P[sub]T of approximately 1.5 GeV, saturating at about 14%. As a function of centrality, v2 is minimum for central events, as expected from geometry, and increases up to near 7% (for 0

We present measurements of elliptic flow and event-by-event fluctuations established by the PHOBOS experiment. Elliptic flow scaled by participant eccentricity is found to be similar for both systems when collisions with the same number of participants or the same particle area density are compared. The agreement of elliptic flow between Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions provides evidence that the matter is created in the initial stage of relativistic heavy ion collisions with transverse granularity similar to that of the participant nucleons. The event-by-event fluctuation results reveal that the initial collision geometry is translated into the final state azimuthal particle distribution, leading to an event-by-event proportionality between the observed elliptic flow and initial eccentricity.

Here, elliptic flow (v2) values for identified particles at midrapidity in Au + Au collisions measured by the STAR experiment in the Beam Energy Scan at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at √sNN = 7.7-62.4 GeV are presented for three centrality classes. The centrality dependence and the data at √sNN = 14.5 GeV are new. Except at the lowest beam energies, we observe a similar relative v2 baryon-meson splitting for all centrality classes which is in agreement within 15% with the number-of-constituent quark scaling. The larger v2 for most particles relative to antiparticles, already observed for minimum bias collisions, shows a clear centrality dependence, with the largest difference for the most central collisions. Also, the results are compared with a multiphase transport (AMPT) model and fit with a blast wave model.