Elliptic flow from non-equilibrium initial condition with a saturation scale

Abstract

A current goal of relativistic heavy-ion collisions experiments is the search for a Color Glass Condensate (CGC) as the limiting state of QCD matter at very high density. In viscous hydrodynamics simulations, a standard Glauber initial condition leads to estimate 4πη/s∼1, while employing the Kharzeev–Levin–Nardi (KLN) modeling of the glasma leads to at least a factor of 2 larger η/s. Within a kinetic theory approach based on a relativistic Boltzmann-like transport simulation, our main result is that the out-of-equilibrium initial distribution reduces the efficiency in building-up the elliptic flow. At RHIC energy we find the available data on v2 are in agreement with a 4πη/s∼1 also for KLN initial conditions. More generally, our study shows that the initial non-equilibrium in p-space can have a significant impact on the build-up of anisotropic flow.