1206.3501 (E. Richardson et al.)

Latest flow results from PHENIX at RHIC - Quarks and Nuclear Physics
Conference Proceedings    [PDF]

E. Richardson, for the PHENIX Collaboration

At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), key insights into the bulk properties of the hot and dense partonic matter arise from the study of azimuthal anisotropy (v_2) of the produced particles. The v_2 values indicate that the matter undergoes rapid thermalization and behaves hydrodynamically at low p_T. Furthermore, the quark scaling of v_2 for different particle species suggests that thermalization occurs at the quark level and that v_2 is the same for all quark flavors. Recently, higher order harmonic measurements (v_3, v_4) have shown the potential for insights into the medium's initial geometry and fluctuations. This proceeding discusses some of the PHENIX Collaboration's latest flow results and their implications.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.3501