An Experimental Review on Elliptic Flow of Strange and Multistrange Hadrons in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

Shusu Shi

doi:10.1155/2016/1987432

Abstract

Strange hadrons, especially multistrange hadrons, are good probes for the early partonic stage of heavy ion collisions due to their small hadronic cross sections. In this paper, I give a brief review on the elliptic flow measurements of strange and multistrange hadrons in relativistic heavy ion collisions at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Highlights

At the early stage of high energy relativistic heavy ion collisions, a hot and dense, strongly interacting medium named Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) is created [1, 2]
The elliptic flow, V2, which is the second Fourier coefficient of the azimuthal distribution of produced particles with respect to the reaction plane, is defined as V2 = ⟨cos 2(φ − Ψ)⟩, where φ is the azimuthal angle of produced particle and Ψ is the azimuthal angle of the reaction plane
Especially multistrange hadrons, and the φ meson are believed to be less sensitive to hadronic rescatterings in the late stage of collisions, as their freeze-out temperatures are close to the phase transition temperature and their hadronic interaction cross sections are expected to be small [12, 13]

Summary

Introduction

At the early stage of high energy relativistic heavy ion collisions, a hot and dense, strongly interacting medium named Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) is created [1, 2]. Due to the self-quenching effect, the elliptic flow provides information about the dynamics at the early stage of the collisions [7,8,9]. Elliptic flow can provide information about the pressure gradients, the effective degrees of freedom, the degree of thermalization, and equation of state of the matter created at the early stage [5]. I am going to review the elliptic flow results of strange and multistrange hadron in relativistic heavy ion collisions from RHIC to LHC energies

Discussions

Summary