Authors
Adam, J. ; Adamczyk, L.; Adams, J. R. ; Adkins, J.; Agakishiev, G.; Aggarwal, M.; Ahammed, Z; Alekseev, I.; Anderson, D. M.; Aparin, A.; Spinka, H. M.; Underwood, D.G.; Zurek, M.
Abstract
Quark interactions with topological gluon configurations can induce local chirality imbalance and parity violation in quantum chromodynamics, which can lead to the chiral magnetic effect (CME)-an electric charge separation along the strong magnetic field in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The CME-sensitive azimuthal correlator observable (Delta gamma) is contaminated by background arising, in part, from resonance decays coupled with elliptic anisotropy (v(2)). We report here differential measurements of the correlator as a function of the pair invariant mass (m(inv)) in 20-50% centrality Au + Au collisions at root s(NN) = 200 GeV by the STAR experiment at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Strong resonance background contributions to Delta gamma. are observed. At large m(inv) where this background is significantly reduced, the Delta gamma. value is found to be significantly smaller. An event-shape-engineering technique is deployed to determine the v(2) background shape as a function of m(inv). We extract a v(2)-independent and m(inv)-averaged signal Delta gamma(sig) = (0.03 +/- 0.06 +/- 0.08) x 10(-4), or (2 +/- 4 +/- 5)% of the inclusive Delta gamma (m(inv) > 0.4 GeV/c(2)) = (1.58 +/- 0.02 +/- 0.02) x 10(-4), within pion p(T) = 0.2-0.8 GeV/c and averaged over pseudorapidity ranges of -1 < eta < -0.05 and 0.05 < eta < 1. This represents an upper limit of 0.23 x 10(-4), or 15% of the inclusive result, at 95% confidence level for the m(inv)-integrated CME contribution.