Anisotropic flow in Cu+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV

Abstract

The anisotropic flow of charged hadrons in asymmetric Cu+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider is studied in a multi-phase transport model. Compared with previous results for symmetric Au+Au collisions, charged hadrons produced around midrapidity in asymmetric collisions are found to have a stronger directed flow $v_1$ and their elliptic flow is also more sensitive to the parton scattering cross section. While higher-order flows $v_3$ and $v_4$ are small at all rapidities, both and $v_2$ in these collisions are appreciable and show an asymmetry in forward and backward rapidities.

Comments: 7 pages, 7 figures, Title changed, revised version to appear in PRC