Studying Heavy Ion Collisions Using Methods From Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Analysis

Abstract

Abstract. We present and discuss a framework for studying the morphology of highmultiplicity events from relativistic heavy ion collisions using methods commonly employed in the analysis of the photons from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The analysis is based on the decomposition of the distribution of the number density of (charged) particles expressed in polar and azimuthal coordinates into a sum of spherical harmonic functions. We present an application of the method exploting relevant symmetries to the study of azimuthal correlations arizing from collective flow among charged particles produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions. We discuss perspectives for eventby-event analyses, which with increasing collision energy will eventually open entirely new dimensions in the study of ultrarelaticistic heavy ion reactions. a