Investigating the Role of Quantum Entanglement in Heavy Ion Collisions through Elliptic Flow

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between initial spatial anisotropy and final state momentum anisotropy in heavy ion collisions through the analysis of elliptic flow ($v_2$) as a function of transverse momentum ($p_T$). Building upon previous studies on thermalization in heavy ion collisions using transverse momentum distributions, we extend the analysis to the $p_T$ dependence of $v_2$ in Pb-Pb and Xe-Xe collisions. By employing a two-component model to extract the thermal and hard scattering contributions to the elliptic flow, we aim to gain further insights into the role of quantum entanglement in the rapid thermalization and collective behavior of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP).

Comments: The arXiv version of this paper incorporates additional theoretical context about quantum entanglement in heavy ion collisions based on recent literature. The core contribution is our systematic measurement and analysis of the two-component behavior in elliptic flow across different centralities in Xe-Xe and Pb-Pb collisions. A revised version of this work has been prepared for journal submission