Exposing the Noncollectivity in Elliptic Flow

Abstract

We show that backward-forward elliptic anisotropy correlation provides an experimentally accessible observable which distinguishes between collective and non-collective contributions to the observed elliptic anisotropy $v_2$ in relativistic heavy ion collisions. The measurement of this observable will reveal the momentum scale at which collective expansion seizes and where the elliptic anisotropy is dominated by (semi)-hard processes.

4 pages, 3 figures. Final version with minor changes. Published as: Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 042302 (2009)

References in corpus (11)

• Viscosity in Strongly Interacting Quantum Field Theories from Black Hole Physics
• Viscosity Information from Relativistic Nuclear Collisions: How Perfect is the Fluid Observed at RHIC?
• On the Strongly-Interacting Low-Viscosity Matter Created in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions
• Suppression of elliptic flow in a minimally viscous quark-gluon plasma
• Has the QCD Critical Point been Signaled by Observations at RHIC ?
• Perturbative QCD Calculations of Elliptic Flow and Shear Viscosity in Au+Au Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV
• Strongly coupled plasma with electric and magnetic charges
• Angular Dependence of Jet Quenching Indicates Its Strong Enhancement Near the QCD Phase Transition
• A Detailed Study of High-pT Neutral Pion Suppression and Azimuthal Anisotropy in Au+Au Collisions at \sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 GeV
• Magnetic Component of Quark-Gluon Plasma is also a Liquid!
• Incident-energy and system-size dependence of directed flow

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Elliptic flow in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV
• Components of the elliptic flow in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV
• Longitudinal Decorrelation of Anisotropic Flows in Heavy-ion Collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
• Exact Relativistic Ideal Hydrodynamical Solutions in (1+3)D with Longitudinal and Transverse Flows
• Forward-backward elliptic anisotropy correlation in parton cascade