Insight from the elliptic flow of identified hadrons measured in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This study analyzes the elliptic flow of identified hadrons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, revealing quark recombination production mechanisms and differences in flow between light and strange quarks.

Contribution

It provides detailed insights into the transverse momentum dependence of elliptic flow and the quark recombination process at RHIC energies, highlighting differences between light and strange quark flow.

Findings

n_q scaled v_2 of φ and Ω are similar, indicating quark recombination production.

Proton v_2 is higher than φ and Ω v_2 at low p_T/n_q, due to quark mass effects.

Quark v_2 is proportional to transverse kinetic energy, considering quark mass differences.

Abstract

In this paper, we have discussed the transverse momentum dependence of elliptic flow measured in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The transverse momentum dependence of the number of constituent quarks ($n_{q}$) scaled $v_{2}$ is obtained for all the measured identified hadrons. The $n_{q}$ scaled $\phi$ $v_{2}$ is found to be similar to $n_{q}$ scaled $\Omega$ $v_{2}$. This indicates that both $\phi$ and $\Omega$ are produced through quark recombination at RHIC energies. We also find $n_{q}$ scaled proton $v_{2}$ ($v_{2}$ of light quarks) is higher than $n_{q}$ scaled $\phi$ and $\Omega$ $v_{2}$ ($v_{2}$ of strange quarks) at $p_{T}/n_{q}$ $<$ 1.0 GeV/c. This can be explained by considering quark $v_{2}$ is proportional to its transverse kinetic energy considering mass of deconfined light and strange quarks equal to $\sim $4 MeV and $\sim$ 140 MeV, respectively.