A Review of Elliptic Flow of Light Nuclei in Heavy-Ion Collisions at RHIC and LHC Energies

Abstract

We present a review of the measurements of elliptic flow ($v_2$) of light nuclei ($d$,$\bar{d}$, $t$, ${}^3\mathrm{He}$, and ${}^3\overline{\mathrm{He}}$) from the RHIC and LHC experiments. Light (anti)nuclei $v_2$ have been compared with that of (anti)proton. We observed a similar trend in light nuclei $v_2$ to that in identified hadron $v_2$ with respect to the general observations such as ($p_{\mathrm{T}}$) dependence, low $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ mass ordering, and centrality dependence. We also compared the difference of nuclei and antinuclei $v_2$ with the corresponding difference of $v_2$ of proton and antiproton at various collision energies. Qualitatively they depict similar behavior. We also compare the data on light nuclei $v_2$ to various theoretical models such as blast-wave and coalescence. We then present a prediction of $v_2$ for ${}^3\mathrm{He}$ and ${}^4\mathrm{He}$ using coalescence and blast-wave models.

11 pages, 10 figures