Re: [Brahms-dev-l] FW: Your_manuscript CS10219 Arsene

From: flemming videbaek <videbaek_at_bnl.gov>
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2010 20:29:54 -0400
I would think that getting centrality at high t will get difficult -  
at the present centrality we have 20-30 counts for deuterons, going to  
kess central we can likely only get ~10-14 counts at most. Protons is  
not an issue of course.

Flemming

Flemming Videbaek
videbaek @ bnl.gov
Brookhaven National Lab
Physics Department
Bldg 510D
Upton, NY 11973

phone: 631-344-4106
cell     :  631-681-1596





On Aug 6, 2010, at 8:22 PM, Ramiro Debbe wrote:

> Great referee!  (with Jamaican accent?)
> Can we get some centrality dependence?
> His comments about our physics arguments are sobering but we can  
> certainly use his advice and improve our arguments.
> Ramiro
> On Aug 6, 2010, at 6:05 PM, flemming videbaek wrote:
>
>> Hi Michael,
>> I am going on vacation next week. I suggest you take the lead and
>> discuss it next Friday. JH will setup and lead that meeting
>>
>> Flemming
>>
>>
>> Flemming Videbaek
>> videbaek @ bnl.gov
>> Brookhaven National Lab
>> Physics Department
>> Bldg 510D
>> Upton, NY 11973
>>
>> phone: 631-344-4106
>> cell     :  631-681-1596
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Aug 6, 2010, at 5:20 PM, Murray, Michael J wrote:
>>
>>> FYI
>>>
>>>
>>> Michael
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: prc_at_aps.org [mailto:prc_at_aps.org]
>>> Sent: Fri 8/6/2010 12:48 PM
>>> To: Murray, Michael J
>>> Subject: Your_manuscript CS10219 Arsene
>>>
>>> Re: CS10219
>>>  Rapidity dependence of deuteron production in Au+Au collisions at
>>>  sqrt s NN=200 GeV
>>>  by I. Arsene, I. G. Bearden, D. Beavis, et al.
>>>
>>> Dear Dr. Murray,
>>>
>>> The above manuscript has been reviewed by one of our referees.
>>> Comments
>>> from the report appear below.
>>>
>>> These comments suggest that specific revisions of your manuscript  
>>> are
>>> in order. When you resubmit your manuscript, please include a  
>>> summary
>>> of the changes made and a succinct response to all recommendations  
>>> or
>>> criticisms contained in the report.
>>>
>>> Yours sincerely,
>>>
>>> Bradley Rubin
>>> Senior Assistant Editor
>>> Physical Review C
>>> Email: prc_at_ridge.aps.org
>>> Fax: 631-591-4141
>>> http://prc.aps.org/
>>>
>>> Physics - spotlighting exceptional research: http://physics.aps.org/
>>>
>>> PROBLEMS WITH MANUSCRIPT:
>>>
>>> In reviewing the figures of your paper, we note that the following
>>> changes would be needed in order for your figures to conform to the
>>> style of the Physical Review.  Please check all figures for the
>>> following problems and make appropriate changes in the text of the
>>> paper itself wherever needed for consistency.
>>>
>>> Figure(s) [4]
>>>        Please rearrange power of 10 in axis label for clarity:
>>> Either
>>>        (i) place the power of 10 as a factor, without parentheses,
>>>        in front of the axis label quantity, changing the sign of the
>>>        power as needed; or (ii) incorporate the power of 10 in the
>>>        topmost or rightmost number on the scale.  Please refer to
>>>        the URL http://forms.aps.org/author/h18graphaxislbls.pdf
>>> for a
>>>        pictorial representation of the preferred forms for axis
>>> labels.
>>>
>>> Figure(s) [please check all and amend where necessary]
>>>        The lettering in the axis labels and/or numbering size
>>> should be
>>>        increased. Please ensure that all lettering is 2 mm or larger
>>>        (1.5 mm for superscripts and subscripts) after scaling to the
>>>        final publication size. Note that the column width is 8.6 cm
>>>        (twice that amount plus gutter for extra wide figures).
>>>
>>>
>>> Please remove the redundant arXiv references for published papers.
>>> For your information, the editorial office checks the references at
>>> several crucial steps during the editorial process. A list of
>>> unnecessary
>>> arXiv references slows the process down considerably--particularly  
>>> so,
>>> if the list is long--and delays the processing of your manuscript.
>>>
>>> Please note that the copy editors will remove such redundant links
>>> during
>>> production for those papers that have been accepted for publication.
>>> However, any manual intervention carries the risk of inadvertently
>>> introducing mistakes.
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Report of the Referee -- CS10219/Arsene
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Executive Summary:
>>> -----------------------------------------
>>> The paper is a straightforward, almost minimalist, presentation
>>> of a data set on proton and deuteron production in central Au+Au
>>> RHIC collisions over a wide range of rapidity, and antiproton and
>>> antideuteron production over a smaller range in rapidity.  The
>>> data are interpreted in terms of a standard coalescence picture
>>> and an extracted phase space density; some trends are noted but
>>> no definite physics conclusions are drawn.  As a simple data
>>> presentation exercise the paper is generally acceptable, though
>>> the physics impact of the data are significantly limited by
>>> being restricted to only central collisions in only one bin of
>>> centrality.
>>>
>>> Though I would not suggest it as a requirement for publication
>>> in the Physical Review, I would urge the authors to consider
>>> enlarging the paper to include data from a greater range of
>>> centrality classes -- based on the error bars shown in Fig 5
>>> it certainly looks as though sufficient statistics would be
>>> available.
>>>
>>> Modulo that decision, the paper has a number of minor errors
>>> in the physics introduction which should be addressed, as
>>> detailed below.  My basic recommendation, then, is that the
>>> paper will be suitable for publication with minor corrections.
>>>
>>>
>>> Concerns:
>>> --------------------------------------
>>> (1) Centrality selection.  The data presented in Fig 3 are for some
>>> particular event selection; but which?  One needs to scan the
>>> paper in some detail (or use a computer text search) to find
>>> the lone sentence "We present ... AuAu collisions with a centrality
>>> range of 0-20%."  in the first paragraph under Section II. Analysis.
>>> (Note that this sentence itself is not quite grammatically correct.)
>>>
>>> Physics: Why was this one, and only one, centrality range chosen
>>> for this analysis?  There is no motivation mentioned in the paper
>>> at all, which is quite puzzling.  The paper describes interpretation
>>> in terms of geometrical quantities such as the coherence volume
>>> implied
>>> by the B_2 measurement; it is only natural to ask, then, how these
>>> might change as the collision geometry/centrality is changed.  To
>>> present data from only one centrality selection, with no  
>>> explanation,
>>> seems quite odd and un-natural, and I would call it a glaring  
>>> defect.
>>> There is of course a limit on available particle statistics, but it
>>> is far from clear (partly because there is so little detail provided
>>> on the error analysis) that no statement could be made for any other
>>> selections, even by breaking the current one into two.
>>>
>>> Analysis: The section on the data analysis should include a
>>> description
>>> of how the events were selected on centrality.
>>>
>>> Formatting: Assuming that the paper is to be published on just the
>>> central collision results, that fact should be made clear throughout
>>> the work: it should appear in the title, in the abstract, in the
>>> summary and in the captions of all the figures and tables.  And,
>>> for that matter, the main data graphs such as Fig 3 should also
>>> state that these results are for the Au+Au collision system!
>>>
>>>
>>> (2) Error analysis.  The presentation in Table I does a good basic  
>>> job
>>> of explaining the uncertainties: statistical errors are in the  
>>> table,
>>> systematics are characterized in the text.  All of the figures and
>>> tables should rise to this same standard:  what is shown by the  
>>> errors
>>> that are displayed?  and what are the sizes of the other sources?
>>>
>>> Elsewhere the treatment of uncertainties is uneven.  The discussion
>>> of errors from the feed-down correction in Section II.D is quite
>>> quantitative; while the preceding section II.C on particle
>>> identification describes inefficiencies and contaminations, but does
>>> not quote anything quantitative for the residual uncertainties from
>>> these effects.  At a minimum the reader should be able to appreciate
>>> the relative contributions of statistical versus systematic
>>> uncertainties, and what the dominant source is for the systematic,
>>> for every quantity quoted and plotted in the paper.
>>>
>>>
>>> (3) Abstract: "in contrast to lower energy data".  This should be
>>> re-worded to make clear that it refers to data from collisions
>>> at lower collision energies, rather than lower secondary particle
>>> energies.
>>>
>>> (4) p1 col2: "surrounding ... medium ensure energy and momentum
>>> conservation".  "Ensure" would be better as "allow" or "permit"
>>> or "enable".  Conservation laws always "ensure" that they are
>>> followed; the role of the medium is to "allow" p + n -> d
>>> to proceed without the need to emit a photon.
>>>
>>>
>>> (5) p1 col2 "As deuterons are formed inside the expanding system"
>>> Is this really true?  How do you know?  One could make the simple
>>> argument that particle within the medium are colliding often
>>> enough, on the order of once per ~1-10 fm/c or faster in the time
>>> before freezeout, then the constituent protons and neutrons will
>>> on average be off their mass shell by ~200-20 MeV at any given
>>> moment; if this is true, then how can one even distinguish a
>>> deuteron bound state, whose binding energy is only 2 MeV?
>>> The bound/unbound distinction doesn't apply over such short
>>> time scales.
>>>  The same misconception appears later in the same paragraph
>>> with the phrase "deuterons are most likely formed very near
>>> freeze-out".  What, exactly, does "formed" mean here?  In order
>>> for a p,n pair to be meaningfully distinguished as either bound
>>> or unbound, the degree to which they are off-mass-shell must be
>>> no larger than the bound-state binding energy.  This implies that
>>> bound-state deuterons cannot even be _defined_ until ~100 fm/c
>>> have passed since the particles' last momentum transfer
>>> interaction, ie freezeout; this time frame cannot be described
>>> as "very near freezeout."  It really makes no sense to say that
>>> deuterons are "formed" on a timescale faster than they can even
>>> be distinguished or defined, whether inside the colliding system
>>> or following freezeout, so this whole passage of the
>>> introduction is really misconceived.
>>>  The reason that sudden-approximation coalescence models can
>>> work is more subtle, quantum mechanically.  After the last
>>> momentum exchanges, ie freezeout, all the protons and neutrons
>>> will be in wavefunctions which span a range of masses around
>>> their free-particle on-shell rest mass.  The off-shell
>>> combinations of momentum and energy will decay away with time,
>>> ie the amplitude of those parts of the wavefunctions will
>>> diminish and only the on-shell states will have significant
>>> amplitudes.  So, looking into the future at the time of
>>> freezeout it is reasonable to count only the on-shell states
>>> for future accounting purposes; but the off-shell states are
>>> still present in the wavefunction at that time.
>>>  For this reason, one can get reasonable answers from a
>>> coalescence model while neglecting these off-shell subtleties.
>>> But, by the same token, there is no excuse at this point in
>>> the field for leaving a sloppy definition of "formed" in the
>>> introduction to a paper like this, and the section should be
>>> rewritten without this misconception.
>>>
>>>
>>> (6) p1 col2: "Coalescence models assume that the distribution
>>> of clusters..."; "density" or "phase-space density" would be
>>> better than "distribution"
>>>
>>>
>>> (7) p1 col2 and Eq. 1: The references [1-3] quoted to
>>> introduce the notation of the coalescence picture in Eq. 1
>>> are incomplete; they date from the Bevelac era (or earlier),
>>> when the notation C_2 was used for the proportionality
>>> similar to that in Eq. 1 but with cross sections rather than
>>> per-event densities.  The B_2 notation used here was originated
>>> during the AGS fixed-target heavy-ion program, starting with
>>> E858 and then E864 and E878; and it is a rather glaring
>>> omission that not all of these experiments are referenced in
>>> this paper, which should be corrected.
>>>
>>>
>>> (8) p1 col2: Mention is made of the n/p ratio in lower-energy
>>> collision data, but the meaning and significance are not clear
>>> at all.  What system was this for?  Does this n/p ratio
>>> correspond to that of the incoming nuclei, or not?  Is the
>>> implication that Eq. 1 should be modified, or assigned a 20%
>>> systematic error?  If not, why not?  The bare inclusion of
>>> this observation, without any details, explanation or
>>> implication is simply confusing and not helpful to the reader.
>>>
>>>
>>> (9) p2 col1: "B_2 carries information about the cluster"
>>> What do you mean by "cluster"?  Is it the deuteron itself, as
>>> implied on the previous page with the phrase "the distribution
>>> of clusters"?  Or does "cluster" mean the system as a whole?
>>> Neither really makes sense; B_2 doesn't really tell you
>>> anything about the deuteron itself per se; and it's strange,
>>> as well as inconsistent with the previous page, to refer to
>>> refer to the whole system as a "cluster".
>>>
>>> (10) p2 col1: "B_2 ... is consistent with measurements of
>>> the deuteron wave-function."  This is a very strange and
>>> jarring statement to read at this point in the paper, since
>>> there has been no discussion up to this point on how the
>>> deuteron's spatial properties figure into the value of B_2
>>> through the coalescence process or otherwise.
>>>
>>> (11) Also, this statement is referenced to Ref 5, but only
>>> vague mention is made of what collision systems or what
>>> collision energies are being referred to; this makes it
>>> somewhat strange to read in the very next sentence that
>>>> = 4.9 GeV is the threshold of "high energy".  It would
>>> be clearer to state the energy ranges, and at least whether
>>> heavy or light nuclei are involved, for all the data being
>>> referred to (this remark applies in several other places
>>> throughout the current paper, as already mentioned in
>>> point 8 above).
>>>
>>> (12) p2 col1: "assuming the region where the coalescence
>>> occurs has also a Gaussian shape"  See point 5 above; the
>>> region which sources/radiates the nucleons is not the same
>>> thing as the region where coalescence occurs.  Note also
>>> that "spatial profile" would be better than "shape" in
>>> this sentence.
>>>
>>> (13) p2 col1: "this ansatz ... facilitates comparison to
>>> interferometry radii".  A traditional point; but, how does
>>> the comparison work in this case?  First, should the R_G
>>> from the coalescence framework analysis be compared
>>> directly to any of the R parameters from HBT analysis?
>>> or is there a factor of 2, or pi, etc between them?
>>> Is this paper going to actually make the comparison?
>>> if not, then you should provide a reference to how the
>>> comparison should be done.
>>>
>>> (14) p2 col1: "However, it has been suggested that..."
>>> This certainly needs a reference, or several, at this point.
>>>
>>> (15) p2 col1: The middle paragraph discusses the results
>>> of deuteron production following a quark coalescence picture,
>>> which is a subject of considerable current interest.  However,
>>> the logic is not laid out clearly here.  Isn't it true, for
>>> example, that if protons follow the quark coalescence picture
>>> and deuterons follow the nucleon coalescence picture, then
>>> deuterons automatically/necessarily follow quark coalescence
>>> as well?  ie isn't quark coalescence for deuterons redundant
>>> with nucleon coalescence? and so not really an independent
>>> piece of information.  Alternatively, is the statement that
>>> deuterons follow quark coalescence equivalent to B_2 being
>>> constant with pT?  But here B_2 is not constant with pT, as
>>> we see in Fig 4; doesn't that have immediate implications for
>>> quark coalescence interpretation of the present data?
>>>  In general this section should be written so as to make
>>> it clear to the reader what are, and are not, redundant versus
>>> independent pieces of information.
>>>
>>> (16) p2 col1: The start of the discussion of discussion of
>>> phase-space densities in the last paragraph should have at
>>> least a few references right at the beginning, especially
>>> as to the motivations.  Why is this an interesting quantity?
>>> The text mentions (i) an indicator or measure of the degree
>>> of equilibrium, which is directly connected to entropy,
>>> and (ii) "information about ... symmetrization efects".
>>> Reasonable enough; but what's the upshot?  What do the results
>>> shown in Fig 5 demonstrate?  Trends are noted in Section III,
>>> but what about the basic magnitude of the measured quantity?
>>> is it high, is it low?
>>>
>>> (17) p2 col2: The result of Eq. 5 is correct only for a true
>>> global equilibrium, with one universal temperature and where
>>> the particles have equal access to the entire relevant volume.
>>> The text acknowledges this, but only in a roundabout way with
>>> the later remark "we are ignoring the collective motion of the
>>> particles", as collective motion is a departure from true
>>> global equilibrium (also, "neglecting the possibility of" is
>>> more accurate than "ignoring" here).  But since collective
>>> motion probably is the case in RHIC Au+Au collisions, from the
>>> B_2 results shown here as well as a host of other evidence,
>>> it is left unclear to what extent Eq.'s 5 - 9 should still be
>>> considered relevant.  For example, in the statement farther down,
>>> attributed to Ref 23, that strong longitudinal flow could
>>> significantly reduce pion phase space densities, it is not clear
>>> if this is a true result about the actual density or an artifact
>>> of Eq. 5 and its corollaries being invalid in the extraction of
>>> the measured phase-space density.
>>>  In general the utility of a framework which assumes global
>>> equilibrium to a system which probably exhibits only local
>>> equilibrium needs to be explained more carefully; if T is a
>>> function of space, then is Eq. 5 still true at a point?  In
>>> the case of collective motion being significant, is Eq. 3
>>> defined over some relevant coherence volume?  etc.
>>>
>>> (18) p2 col2: "the maximum space averaged phase-space density,
>>> which is at the center of the Gaussian source."  Sorry, but
>>> this makes no sense at al: a spatial average is not defined
>>> for different points within the space.  The confusion over
>>> the relevant spatial volumes mentioned in point 17 above
>>> is clearly causing serious trouble here.
>>>
>>> (19) p2 col2: In Eq. 9, is R_G a function of particle
>>> momentum, particularly pT?  Presumably so, and if so then it
>>> would be useful to write the dependence explicitly here.
>>>
>>> (20) Minor formatting: the text following Eq. 5 should
>>> probably be left-justified rather than indented.  It is not
>>> clear whether the text following Eq.'s 4 and 6 should or
>>> should not start new paragraphs, either.
>>>
>>> (21) The presentation of Eq. 6 in terms of chemical potential
>>> is formally correct, but at the same time obscure -- in the
>>> dilute limit, what is the value of these chemical potentials?
>>> Is it just the particle mass, which would make Eq. (6)
>>> equivalent to exp[-mT/T] at all rapidities?  or does it vary
>>> significantly with the net baryon density, which changes
>>> considerably with rapidity (as BRAHMS has made clear in
>>> other measurements)?
>>>
>>> (22) p5 col2: "expect the ratio of the proton and antiproton
>>> phase densities to be flat"; is this as a function of
>>> rapidity?  or pT?  or both?
>>>
>>> (23) Summary, but also relevant to several sections of the
>>> paper: There is a reasonable interpretation here that the
>>> B_2 and phase space density measurements have information
>>> about the existence of collective flow, particularly what
>>> is called radial flow.  This is certainly valuable and
>>> worth publishing.  However, the current paper doesn't say
>>> much about whether these implications are or are not
>>> consistent with the great body of work that has now been
>>> done on modeling RHIC A+A collisions with hydrodynamics.
>>> It is not necessarily the responsibility of this paper
>>> to make a full-blown analysis, but the reader deserves some
>>> basic orientation: are the results shown here generally
>>> consistent with existing hydrodynamical models?  or is
>>> there some kind of surprise or contradiction brewing?
>>>
>>>
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>>
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