Measurement of the azimuthal anisotropy of neutral pions in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV

Abstract

First measurements of the azimuthal anisotropy of neutral pions produced in PbPb collisions at a center-of-mass energy of sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV are presented. The amplitudes of the second Fourier component (v2) of the neutral pion azimuthal distributions are extracted using an event-plane technique. The values of v2 are studied as a function of the neutral pion transverse momentum (pt) for different classes of collision centrality in the kinematic range 1.6 < pt < 8.0 GeV, within the pseudorapidity interval abs(eta) < 0.8. The CMS measurements of v2(pt) are similar to previously reported neutral pion azimuthal anisotropy results from sqrt(s(NN)) = 200 GeV AuAu collisions at RHIC, despite a factor of about 14 increase in the center-of-mass energy. In the momentum range 2.5 < pt < 5.0 GeV, the neutral pion anisotropies are found to be smaller than those observed by CMS for inclusive charged particles.