The phi meson production from small to large systems of ion collisions at root S-NN=200 and 193 GeV

The measurement of phi meson production is a unique tool to explore the characteristics of the quark-gluon plasma. The phi meson has a small interaction cross section therefore its yields and elliptic flow are good probes of the quark-gluon plasma properties. The phi meson production can be sensitive to the strangeness enhancement effect and can provide information about the flavor dependence of energy loss and elliptic flow. Measurements in different nucleus-nucleus collisions allow us to perform a systematic investigation of the nuclear matter effects, system size and geometry influence on phi meson production. The PHENIX experiment has measured transverse momentum spectra, nuclear modification factors R-AB, and elliptic anisotropy parameter v(2) for phi mesons in p+Al,p/d/(3) He/Cu +Au collisions at root s(NN )= 200 GeV and in U + U collisions at root s(NN )= 193 GeV at midrapidity (vertical bar eta vertical bar < 0.35). The obtained results exhibit scaling of v(2) for phi mesons with eccentricity of participant nucleons (collision geometry), whereas the phi R-AB values depend on the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions (system size). The comparison of experimental data on the phi meson to various model calculations (AMPT, iEBE-VISHNU and PYTHIA/Angantyr) suggests the importance of viscous hydrodynamics and the coalescence mechanism in describing the properties and hadronization of the QGP.