Investigating the Role of Quantum Entanglement in Heavy Ion Collisions through Elliptic Flow

TL;DR

This study explores how quantum entanglement influences the rapid thermalization and collective flow in quark-gluon plasma formed during heavy ion collisions, using elliptic flow measurements in Pb-Pb and Xe-Xe systems.

Contribution

It extends analysis of elliptic flow to transverse momentum dependence and introduces a two-component model to separate thermal and hard scattering effects, highlighting quantum entanglement's role.

Findings

Elliptic flow $v_2$ varies with $p_T$ in heavy ion collisions.

A two-component model effectively separates thermal and hard scattering contributions.

Quantum entanglement may facilitate rapid thermalization of QGP.

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between initial spatial anisotropy and final state momentum anisotropy in heavy ion collisions through the analysis of elliptic flow ($v_2$) as a function of transverse momentum ($p_T$). Building upon previous studies on thermalization in heavy ion collisions using transverse momentum distributions, we extend the analysis to the $p_T$ dependence of $v_2$ in Pb-Pb and Xe-Xe collisions. By employing a two-component model to extract the thermal and hard scattering contributions to the elliptic flow, we aim to gain further insights into the role of quantum entanglement in the rapid thermalization and collective behavior of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP).