paper

Suppression of elliptic flow in a minimally viscous quark-gluon plasma

arXiv:0709.0742 · doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2007.11.019

Abstract

We compute the time evolution of elliptic flow in non-central relativistic heavy-ion collisions, using a (2+1)-dimensional code with longitudinal boost-invariance to simulate viscous fluid dynamics in the causal Israel-Stewart formulation. We show that even ``minimal'' shear viscosity eta/s=hbar/(4pi) leads to a large reduction of elliptic flow compared to ideal fluid dynamics, raising questions about the interpretation of recent experimental data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.

5 pages, incl. 4 figures. Fig.2 redrawn, several footnotes and references added. This version accepted by Physics Letters B

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