Initial state fluctuations and higher harmonic flow in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

A framework combining Yang-Mills dynamics of the pre-equilibrium glasma with relativistic viscous hydrodynamic evolution of the quark-gluon plasma and hadron gas phases is presented. Event-by-event fluctuations of nucleon positions and color charges are taken into account, leading to negative binomial fluctuations of gluon multiplicities. Experimental anisotropic flow coefficients v2-v5 of charged hadron distributions in heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider are well described. Furthermore, event-by-event distributions of v2, v3 and v4 measured by the ATLAS collaboration are reproduced.

Comments: 4 pages, 2 figures, submitted to the proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions, Quark Matter 2012, August 13-18, 2012, Washington DC