Reaction plane determination using azimuthal correlations

Abstract

We present a new technique for the determination of the reaction plane in heavy-ion reactions at incident energies ranging from the Fermi energy up to \ensuremath{\approxeq}100 MeV/nucleon. Our technique exploits the azimuthal correlation between light particles and the reaction plane. For illustrative purposes, azimuthal distributions of particles with respect to the reaction plane are extracted from data taken by the Michigan State University 4\ensuremath{\pi} array for 35 MeV/nucleon Ar+V collisions. The influences of momentum conservation and detection biases on the reaction plane determination are discussed, and the accuracy of the new technique is evaluated.