Phi Meson Measurements at RHIC with the PHENIX Detector

Abstract

The measurement of phi mesons provides a unique and complementary method for exploring properties of the hot and dense medium created in the relativistic heavy ion collisions. It has a relatively small hadronic interaction cross section and is sensitive to the increase of strangeness (strangeness enhancement), a phenomenon associated with soft particles in bulk matter. Measurements in the dilepton channels are especially interesting since leptons interact only electromagnetically, thus carrying the information from their production phase directly to the detector. Measurements in different nucleus-nucleus collisions allow us to perform a systematic study of the nuclear medium effects on phi meson production. The PHENIX detector provides the capabilities to measure the phi meson production in a wide range of transverse momentum and rapidity to study these effects. In this proceeding, we present measurements of the phi mesons in a variety of collision systems at $\sqrt{s_NN} = 200$ GeV. In case of small systems, the data are compared with AMPT calculations to study the various cold nuclear medium effects involved in phi meson production.