A Review of Elliptic Flow of Light Nuclei in Heavy-Ion Collisions at RHIC and LHC Energies

TL;DR

This review summarizes measurements of elliptic flow ($v_{2}$) of light nuclei in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC, comparing experimental data with theoretical models and providing predictions for helium isotopes.

Contribution

It compiles and analyzes existing $v_{2}$ data for light nuclei, compares it with hadron $v_{2}$, and offers new model-based predictions for helium isotopes.

Findings

Light nuclei $v_{2}$ shows similar trends to hadron $v_{2}$.

Differences in nuclei and antinuclei $v_{2}$ mirror proton-antiproton behavior.

Models like blast-wave and coalescence effectively describe the data.

Abstract

We present a review of the measurements of elliptic flow ($v_{2}$) of light nuclei ($d$,$\bar{d}$, $t$, $^{3}\rm He$, and $^{3}\overline{\rm He}$) from the RHIC and LHC experiments. Light (anti)nuclei $v_{2}$ have been compared with that of (anti)proton. We observed a similar trend in light nuclei $v_{2}$ to that in identified hadron $v_{2}$ with respect to the general observations such as ($p_{\rm T}$) dependence, low $p_{\rm T}$ mass ordering, and centrality dependence. We also compared the difference of nuclei and antinuclei $v_{2}$ with the corresponding difference of $v_{2}$ of proton and antiproton at various collision energies. Qualitatively they depict similar behavior. We also compare the data on light nuclei $v_{2}$ to various theoretical models such as blast-wave and coalescence. We then present a prediction of $v_{2}$ for $^{3}\rm He$ and $^{4}\rm He$ using coalescence and blast-wave models.