Elastic parton scattering and non-statistical event-by-event mean-pt fluctuations in Au + Au collisions at RHIC
Abstract
Non-statistical event-by-event mean-pt fluctuations in Au + Au collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 130 and 200 GeV are analyzed in AMPT with string-melting, and the results are compared with STAR data. The analysis suggests that in-medium elastic parton scattering may contribute greatly to the mean-pt fluctuations in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that non-statistical event-by-event mean-pt fluctuations can be used to probe the initial partonic dynamics in these collisions. The comparison shows that with an in-medium elastic parton scattering cross section sigmap=10 mb, AMPT with string-melting can well reproduce sqrt(sNN) = 130 GeV data on the centrality dependence of non-statistical event-by-event mean-pt fluctuations. The comparison also shows that the fluctuation data for sqrt(sNN) = 200 GeV Au + Au collisions can be well reproduced with sigmap between 6 and 10 mb.