Building up the elliptic flow: analytical insights

Abstract

In this paper, we present a fully analytical description of the early-stage formation of elliptic flow in relativistic viscous hydrodynamics. We first construct an elliptic deformation of Gubser flow which is a boost invariant solution of the Navier-Stokes equation with a nontrivial transverse profile. We then analytically calculate the momentum anisotropy of the flow as a function of time and discuss the connection with the empirical formula by Bhalerao {\it et al.} regarding the viscosity dependence of elliptic flow.

Comments: 8 pages;v2. To be published in physics letters B