Elliptic flow of thermal photons and dileptons

Abstract

In this talk we describe the recently discovered rich phenomenology of elliptic flow of electromagnetic probes of the hot matter created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Using a hydrodynamic model for the space-time dynamics of the collision fireball created in Au+Au collisions at RHIC, we compute the transverse momentum spectra and elliptic flow of thermal photons and dileptons. These observables are shown to provide differential windows into various stages of the fireball expansion.

8 pages, including 9 figures. Invited talk at the Hard Probes 2006 Conference (Asilomar, June 9-16, 2006), to appear in the Proceedings (Elsevier)

References in corpus (1)

• Universality of the saturation scale and the initial eccentricity in heavy ion collisions

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Elliptic flow of thermal photons and formation time of quark gluon plasma at RHIC
• Dimuon transverse momentum spectra as a tool to characterize the emission region in heavy-ion collisions
• Direct photons from relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Transverse momentum spectra of dileptons at NA60
• Single photons from relativistic collision of lead nuclei at CERN SPS: A reanalysis