First results from RHIC-PHENIX

Abstract

The PHENIX experiment consists of a large detector system located at the newly commissioned relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The primary goal of the PHENIX experiment is to look for signatures of the QCD prediction of a deconfined high-energy-density phase of nuclear matter quark gluon plasma. PHENIX started data taking for Au+Au collisions at √sNN=130 GeV in June 2000. The signals from the beam-beam counter (BBC) and zero degree calorimeter (ZDC) are used to determine the centrality of the collision. A Glauber model reproduces the ZDC spectrum reasonably well to determine the participants in a collision. Charged particle multiplicity distribution from the first PHENIX paper is compared with the other RHIC experiment and the CERN, SPS results. Transverse momentum of photons are measured in the electro-magnetic calorimeter (EMCal) and preliminary results are presented. Particle identification is made by a time of flight (TOF) detector and the results show clear separation of the charged hadrons from each other.