  In the particles produced in a nuclear collision undergo collective flow, the
reaction plane can in principle be determined through a global event analysis.
We show here that collective flow can be identified by evaluating the reaction
plane independently in two separate rapidity intervals, and studying the
correlation between the two results. We give an analytical expression for the
correlation function between the two planes as a function of their relative
angle. We also discuss how this correlation function is related to the
anisotropy of the transverse momentum distribution. Email contact:
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