Longitudinal Asymmetry and its Measurable Effects in Pb–Pb Collisions at 2.76 TeV

Collisions of identical nuclei at finite impact parameter have an unequal number of participating nucleons from each nucleus due to fluctuations. The event-by-event fluctuations have been estimated by measuring the difference of energy in the zero-degree calorimeters on either side of interaction vertex. The fluctuations affect the global variables such as the rapidity distributions, and the effect has been correlated with a measure of these fluctuations.