Beam Energy Dependence of the Third Harmonic of Azimuthal Correlations in Au+Au Collisions at RHIC

In this paper, we present results from a harmonic decomposition of two-particle azimuthal correlations measured with the STAR detector in Au + Au collisions for energies ranging from √sNN = 7.7 to 200 GeV. The third harmonic v$2\atop{3}${ 2 } = , where Φ1 - Φ2 is the angular difference in azimuth, is studied as a function of the pseudorapidity difference between particle pairs Δη = η1-η2 . Nonzero v$2\atop{3}${ 2 } is directly related to the previously observed large- Δη narrow- ΔΦ ridge correlations and has been shown in models to be sensitive to the existence of a low viscosity quark gluon plasma phase. For sufficiently central collisions, v$2\atop{3}${ 2 } persist down to an energy of 7.7 GeV, suggesting that quark gluon plasma may be created even in these low energy collisions. In peripheral collisions at these low energies, however, v$2\atop{3}${ 2 } is consistent with zero. Finally, when scaled by the pseudorapidity density of charged-particle multiplicity per participating nucleon pair, v$2\atop{3}${ 2 } for central collisions shows a minimum near √sNN = 20 GeV .