Elliptic and Triangular flow in asymmetric heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This study investigates elliptic and triangular flow in asymmetric heavy-ion collisions at 200 GeV, revealing size-dependent flow fluctuations and suggesting asymmetric collisions as a tool to constrain flow fluctuation models.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed comparison of flow and eccentricity fluctuations in asymmetric versus symmetric collisions at RHIC energies using the AMPT model.

Findings

Triangular flow (v3) and related fluctuations are similar across different ion sizes.

Elliptic flow (v2) and its fluctuations depend strongly on ion size.

Asymmetric collisions can help constrain models of flow fluctuations.

Abstract

We present a study of the elliptic (v2) and triangular (v3) flow and their corresponding eccentricity fluctuations for asymmetric (Au+Ag, Au+Cu and Au+Si) collisions at \sqrt_NN = 200 GeV. These are compared to the corresponding results from symmetric (Au+Au and Cu+Cu) collisions at the same energy. The study which is carried out using a multi-phase transport (AMPT) model shows that triangularity (\epsilon_3), fluctuations in triangularity and v3 do not show much variation for the different colliding ion sizes studied. However the eccentricity (\epsilon_2), fluctuations in eccentricity and v2 shows a strong dependence on colliding ion size for a given number of participating nucleons. Our study thus indicates that asymmetric heavy-ion collisions could be used to constrain models dealing with flow fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions.