Open Access

Clemens Adler, Zubayer Ahammed, Chris Allgower, John Amonett, Bryon D. Anderson, Mike Anderson, Georgy S. Averichev, Jan Balewski, Olga Barannikova, Lee Stuart Barnby, Jérome Baudot, Selemon Bekele, Victoria Vladimirovna Belaga, Rene Bellwied, Jens Berger, Hans Bichsel, Anja Billmeier, Leslie C. Bland, Charles O. Blyth, Billy E. Bonner, Abdelkrim Boucham, Andrei V. Brandin, Alessandro Bravar, R. V. Cadman, Helen Louise Caines, Manuel Calderón de la Barca Sánchez, Andrés Cardenas, J. Carroll, Javier Ernesto Castillo Castellanos, M. Castro, Daniel A. Cebra, Petr Chaloupka, S. Chattopadhyay, Y. Chen, S. P. Chernenko, Michael Gerard Cherney, Alexei Chikanian, B. Choi, William Christie, Jean Pierre Coffin, Thomas Michael Cormier, John G. Cramer, Henry J. Crawford, W. S. Deng, Anatoly A. Derevschikov, Lidia Didenko, Thomas Dietel, James E. Draper, V. B. Dunin, James C. Dunlop, Volker Eckardt, Leonid G. Efimov, V. Emelianov, Jon M. Engelage, Geary Wareham Eppley, Barbara Ewa Erazmus, Patricia Fachini, V. Faine, Kirill Filimonov, Evan Finch, Yuri V. Fisyak, Dominik Bernhard Flierl, K. J. Foley, J. Fu, Carl A. Gagliardi, N. Gagunashvili, J. Gans, L. Gaudichet, Marie Germain, Frank Geurts, Vahe Ghazikhanian, Oleg A. Grachov, Vladislav A. Grigoriev, M. Guedon, E. Gushin, Timothy J. Hallman, David H. Hardtke, John W. Harris, Thomas W. Henry, Steven Francis Heppelmann, T. Herston, Boris Hippolyte, Andrew S. Hirsch, Eric Hjort, Gerald W. Hoffmann, M. Horsley, Huan Zhong Huang, Thomas J. Humanic, George J. Igo, A. Ishihara, Yu. I. Ivanshin, Peter Martin Jacobs, William W. Jacobs, Michał Janik, I. Johnson, Peter Graham Jones, Eleanor G. Judd, Kaneta Kaneta, Morton Kaplan, Declan Keane, Joanna Kiryluk, Adam Ryszard Kisiel, Jennifer Lynn Klay, Spencer Robert Klein, A. Klyachko, A. S. Konstantinov, M. Kopytine, L. Kotchenda, A. D. Kovalenko, M. Kramer, Peter Kravtsov, Keith William Krueger, Christian Claude Kuhn, Anatoly I. Kulikov, Gerd J. Kunde, Christopher Lee Kunz, R. Kh. Kutuev, A. A. Kuznetsov, L. Lakehal-Ayat, Matthew A. C. Lamont, Jeffery M. Landgraf, S. Lange, Curtis Patrick Leon Lansdell, Brian Lasiuk, Frank Laue, Alexei Lebedev, Richard Lednický, V. M. Leontiev, Micheal J. LeVine, Q. Li, Sam J. Lindenbaum, Michael A. Lisa, F. Liu, L. Liu, Z. Liu, Q. J. Liu, Tonko A. Ljubicic, William Joseph Llope, G. LoCurto, H. Long, Ronald S. Longacre, M. Lopez-Noriega, William A. Love, Thomas Ludlam, David Lynn, Jing-guo Ma, Richard Daniel Majka, Spyridon Margetis, Christina Markert, L. Martin, Jay N. Marx, Howard S. Matis, Yuri A. Matulenko, Tom S. McShane, F. Meissner, Yu. Melnick, Aleksei P. Meščanin, Matthias Messer, M. L. Miller, Z. Milosevich, Nikolai G. Minaev, J. Mitchell, V. A. Moiseenko, C. F. Moore, V. Morozov, M. M. de Moura, Marcelo Gameiro Munhoz, John M. Nelson, P. Nevski, Vladimir A. Nikitin, Larisa V. Nogach, B. Norman, Sandibek B. Nurušev, Grazyna Janina Odyniec, Akio Ogawa, Vitaly A. Okorokov, Markus D. Oldenburg, Douglas L. Olson, Guy Paic, S. U. Pandey, Yuri Panebratsev, Sergei Yurievich Panitkin, A. I. Pavlinov, Tomasz Jan Pawlak, V. Perevoztchikov, Wiktor Stanislaw Peryt, V. A. Petrov, Mirko Planinic, Jan Marian Pluta, Norbert T. Porile, Jeffrey Brent Porter, Arthur M. Poskanzer, E. Potrebenikova, Duncan J. Prindle, Claude A. Pruneau, Jörn H. Putschke, Gulshan Rai, Gregory L. Rakness, Olivier Ravel, Robert L. Ray, Sergej V. Razin, Dennis Michael Reichhold, Jeffrey G. Reid, G. Renault, Fabrice Retiere, Alexey Ridiger, Hans Georg Ritter, Jabus B. Roberts, O. V. Rogachevski, Juan L. Romero, A. Rose, Christelle Sophie Roy, Vladimir L. Rykov, Iwona Sakrejda, Sevil Salur, Jack H. Sandweiss, A. C. Saulys, Igor A. Savin, Joachim Schambach, Rolf Paul Scharenberg, Norbert Schmitz, Lee S. Schroeder, Andreas Schüttauf, Kai Schweda, Janet Elizabeth Seger, D. Seliverstov, Peter Seyboth, Ehtiram Shahaliev, Konstantin E. Shestermanov, S. S. Shimanskii, V. S. Shvetcov, Goran P. Skoro, Nikolai Smirnov, Raimond Snellings, Paul Richard Sorensen, James Sowinski, Harold. M. Spinka, Brijesh Kumar Srivastava, Edward J. Stephenson, Reinhard Stock, Alexander Stolpovsky, Michail Nikolaevič Strichanov, Blair Stringfellow, Christof Struck, Alexandre Alarcon do Passo Suaide, Evan R. Sugarbaker, Christophe Pierre Suire, Michal Šumbera, Bernd Surrow, Timothy James MacNeil Symons, Alejandro Szanto de Toledo, Piotr Szarwas, An Tai, Jun Takahashi, Aihong Tang, James H. Thomas, M. Thompson, V. Tikhomirov, Mikhail V. Tokarev, Marguerite Belt Tonjes, Thomas A. Trainor, Stephen Trentalange, Robert E. Tribble, V. Trofimov, Oleg D. Tsai, Thomas Ullrich, David G. Underwood, Gene Van Buren, A. M. VanderMolen, I. M. Vasilevski, Alexander Nikolaevich Vasiliev, Steven E. Vigdor, Sergei Voloshin, F. Wang, H. Ward, J. W. Watson, R. Wells, Gary D. Westfall, Charles A. Whitten, Howard Wieman, Robert Willson, Scott W. Wissink, Richard Witt, J. Wood, N. Xu, Z. Xu, A. E. Yakutin, E. Yamamoto, J. Yang, Pablo P. Yepes, Vladimir Yurevich Yurevich, Y. V. Zanevski, I. Zborovský, Haitao Zhang, W. M. Zhang, R. Zoulkarneev, A. N. Zubarev

• Elliptic flow holds much promise for studying the early-time thermalization attained in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions. Flow measurements also provide a means of distinguishing between hydrodynamic models and calculations which approach the low density (dilute gas) limit. Among the effects that can complicate the interpretation of elliptic flow measurements are azimuthal correlations that are unrelated to the reaction plane (nonflow correlations). Using data for Au + Au collisions at sqrt[sNN]=130 GeV from the STAR time projection chamber, it is found that four-particle correlation analyses can reliably separate flow and nonflow correlation signals. The latter account for on average about 15% of the observed second-harmonic azimuthal correlation, with the largest relative contribution for the most peripheral and the most central collisions. The results are also corrected for the effect of flow variations within centrality bins. This effect is negligible for all but the most central bin, where the correction to the elliptic flow is about a factor of 2. A simple new method for two-particle flow analysis based on scalar products is described. An analysis based on the distribution of the magnitude of the flow vector is also described.