Comparison of methods for elliptic flow measurements at NICA energies SNN=4−11 Gev

Abstract

The goal of the Multi-Purpose Detector (MPD) experiment at NICA collider is to explore the QCD phase diagram of strongly interacting matter produced in nucleus-nucleus collisions at SNN=4−11 Gev. The performance of MPD detector for elliptic flow measurements of charged hadrons is studied with Monte-Carlo simulations using collisions of Au+Au ions employing UrQMD, SMASH, and AMPT heavy-ion event generators. Different methods for flow measurements: event plane and direct cumulants are used to investigate the contribution of non-flow correlations and flow fluctuations.