Elliptic flow in nuclear collisions at the Large Hadron Collider

TL;DR

This paper uses a hydrodynamical model with initial conditions from perturbative QCD to predict elliptic flow in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC, extending previous RHIC results.

Contribution

It introduces a combined approach using EKRT initial conditions and hydrodynamics to predict elliptic flow at LHC energies, providing new theoretical forecasts.

Findings

Baseline results agree with RHIC data

Predictions for pion spectra and elliptic flow at LHC

Discussion of mass and multiplicity effects

Abstract

We use perfect-fluid hydrodynamical model to predict the elliptic flow coefficients in Pb + Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The initial state for the hydrodynamical calculation for central $A + A$ collisions is obtained from the perturbative QCD + saturation (EKRT) model. The centrality dependence of the initial state is modeled by the optical Glauber model. We show that the baseline results obtained from the framework are in good agreement with the data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), and show predictions for the $p_T$ spectra and elliptic flow of pions in Pb + Pb collisions at the LHC. Also mass and multiplicity effects are discussed.