Flow-plane decorrelations in heavy-ion collisions with multiple-plane cumulants
The azimuthal correlations between local flow planes at different (pseudo)rapidities (η) may reveal important details of the initial nuclear matter density distributions in heavy-ion collisions. Extensive experimental measurements of a factorization ratio (r 2 ) and its derivative (F 2 ) have shown evidence of the longitudinal flow-plane decorrelation. However, nonflow effects also affect this observable and prevent a quantitative understanding of the phenomenon. In this paper, to distinguish decorrelation and nonflow effects, we propose a new cumulant observable, T 2 , which largely suppresses nonflow. Here, the technique sensitivity to different initial-state scenarios and nonflow effects are tested with a simple Monte Carlo model, and in the end, the method is applied to events simulated by a multiphase transport model (AMPT) for Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV. We also emphasize that a distinct decorrelation signal requires not only the right sign of an observable but also its proper dependence on the η window of the reference flow plane to be consistent with the pertinent decorrelation picture.