Influence of shear viscosity of quark-gluon plasma on elliptic flow in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions.

Journal: Physical Review Letters
Published:
Abstract

We investigate the influence of a temperature-dependent shear viscosity over entropy density ratio η/s on the transverse momentum spectra and elliptic flow of hadrons in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. We find that the elliptic flow in √S(NN)=200  GeV Au+Au collisions at RHIC is dominated by the viscosity in the hadronic phase and in the phase transition region, but largely insensitive to the viscosity of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). At the highest LHC energy, the elliptic flow becomes sensitive to the QGP viscosity and insensitive to the hadronic viscosity.

Authors
H Niemi, G Denicol, P Huovinen, E Molnár, D Rischke