Elliptic and triangular flow in asymmetric heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

We present a study of the elliptic (${v}_{2}$) and triangular (${v}_{3}$) flow and their corresponding eccentricity fluctuations for asymmetric (Au+Ag, Au+Cu, and Au+Si) collisions at $\sqrt{{s}_{NN}}$ $=$ 200 GeV. These are compared to the corresponding results from symmetric (Au+Au and Cu+Cu) collisions at the same energy. The study which is carried out using a multiphase transport (AMPT) model shows that triangularity (${\ensuremath{\epsilon}}_{3}$), fluctuations in triangularity and ${v}_{3}$ do not show much variation for the different colliding ion sizes studied. However the eccentricity (${\ensuremath{\epsilon}}_{2}$), fluctuations in eccentricity and ${v}_{2}$, shows a strong dependence on colliding ion size for a given number of participating nucleons. Our study thus indicates that asymmetric heavy-ion collisions could be used to constrain models dealing with flow fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions.