Abstract
The first measurement at the LHC of charge-dependent directed flow () relative to the spectator plane is presented for Pb-Pb collisions at . Results are reported for charged hadrons and mesons for the transverse momentum intervals and in the 5%–40% and 10%–40% centrality classes, respectively. The difference between the positively and negatively charged hadron has a positive slope as a function of pseudorapidity , . The same measurement for and mesons yields a positive value , which is about 3 orders of magnitude larger than the one of the charged hadrons. These measurements can provide new insights into the effects of the strong electromagnetic field and the initial tilt of matter created in noncentral heavy ion collisions on the dynamics of light (u, d, and s) and heavy (c) quarks. The large difference between the observed of charged hadrons and mesons may reflect different sensitivity of the charm and light quarks to the early time dynamics of a heavy ion collision. These observations challenge some recent theoretical calculations, which predicted a negative and an order of magnitude smaller value of for both light flavor and charmed hadrons.
- Received 25 November 2019
- Revised 22 April 2020
- Accepted 19 May 2020
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.022301
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