Observation of the Onset of Constituent Quark Number Scaling in Heavy-Ion Collisions at RHIC

Abstract: Partonic collectivity is one of the necessary signatures for the formation of Quark-Gluon-Plasma in high-energy nuclear collisions. Number of Constituent Quarks (NCQ) scaling has been observed for light hadron elliptic flow $v_2$ in top energy nuclear collisions at RHIC and the LHC, and this has been theoretically suggested as strong evidence for partonic collectivity. In this letter, a systematic analysis of $v_2$ of $\pi^{\pm}$, $K^{\pm}$, $K^{0}_{S}$, $p$ and $\Lambda$ in Au+Au collisions at ${\sqrt{s_{{\rm{NN}}}}}$ = 3.2, 3.5, 3.9, and 4.5 GeV, with the STAR experiment at RHIC, is presented. NCQ scaling is markedly violated at 3.2 GeV, consistent with a hadronic-interaction dominated equation of state. However, as the collision energy increases, a gradual evolution to NCQ scaling is observed. This beam-energy dependence of $v_2$ for all hadrons studied provides evidence for the onset of dominant partonic interactions by ${\sqrt{s{_{\rm{NN}}}}}$ = 4.5 GeV.