Bulk viscosity-driven suppression of shear viscosity effects on the flow harmonics at RHIC

Abstract

The interplay between shear and bulk viscosities on the flow harmonics, $v_n$'s, at RHIC is investigated using the newly developed relativistic 2+1 hydrodynamical code v-USPhydro that includes bulk and shear viscosity effects both in the hydrodynamic evolution and also at freeze-out. While shear viscosity is known to attenuate the flow harmonics, we find that the inclusion of bulk viscosity decreases the shear viscosity-induced suppression of the flow harmonics bringing them closer to their values in ideal hydrodynamical calculations. Depending on the value of the bulk viscosity to entropy density ratio, $\zeta /s$, in the quark-gluon plasma, the bulk viscosity-driven suppression of shear viscosity effects on the flow harmonics may require a re-evaluation of the previous estimates of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio, $\eta /s$, of the quark-gluon plasma previously extracted by comparing hydrodynamic calculations to heavy ion data.

Comments: 36 pages, 12 figures, references added