Beam-energy dependence of correlations between mean transverse momentum and anisotropic flow of charged particles in Au+Au collisions at RHIC

The correlation between the mean transverse momentum, [ p T ], and the squared anisotropic flow, v n 2 , on an event-by-event basis has been suggested to be influenced by the initial conditions in heavy-ion collisions. We present measurements of the variances and covariance of [ p T ] and v n 2 , along with their dimensionless ratio, for Au+Au collisions at various beam energies: s N N = 14.6, 19.6, 27, 54.4, and 200 GeV. Our measurements reveal a distinct energy-dependent behavior in the variances and covariances. In addition, the dimensionless ratio displays a similar behavior across different beam energies. We compare our measurements with hydrodynamic models and similar measurements from Pb+Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). These findings provide valuable insights into the beam energy dependence of the specific shear viscosity ( η / s ) and initial-state effects, allowing for differentiating between different initial-state models.