Testing of coalescence mechanism in high energy heavy ion collisions using two-particle correlations with identified particle trigger

Abstract

In central Au-Au collisions at top RHIC energy, two particle correlation measurements with identified hadron trigger have shown attenuation of near side proton triggered jet-like yield at intermediate transverse momentum ($p{_T}$), 2$< p{_T} <$ 6 GeV/$\it{c}$. The attenuation has been attributed to the anomalous baryon enhancement observed in the single inclusive measurements at the same $p{_T}$ range. The enhancement has been found to be in agreement with the models invoking coalescence of quarks as a mechanism of hadronization. Baryon enhancement has also been observed at LHC in the single inclusive spectra. We study the consequence of such an enhancement on two particle correlations at LHC energy within the framework of A Multi Phase Transport (AMPT) model that implements quark coalescence as a mode of hadronization. In this paper we have calculated the proton over pion ratio and the near side per trigger yield associated to pion and proton triggers at intermediate $p{_T}$ from String Melting (SM) version of AMPT. Results obtained are contrasted with the AMPT Default (Def.) which does not include coalescence. Baryon enhancement has been observed in AMPT SM at intermediate $p{_T}$. Near side jet-like correlated yield associated to baryon (proton) trigger in the momentum region where baryon generation is enhanced is found to be suppressed as compared to the corresponding yields for the meson (pion) trigger in most central Pb-Pb events. No such effect has been found in the Default version of AMPT.