Higher flow harmonics from(3+1)D event-by-event viscous hydrodynamics

Abstract

We present event-by-event viscous hydrodynamic calculations of the anisotropic flow coefficients ${v}_{2}$ to ${v}_{5}$ for heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC). We study the dependence of different flow harmonics on shear viscosity and the morphology of the initial state. ${v}_{3}$ and higher flow harmonics exhibit a particularly strong dependence on both the initial granularity and shear viscosity. We argue that a combined analysis of all available flow harmonics has the potential to determine $\ensuremath{\eta}/s$ of the quark gluon plasma more precisely than previously. Presented results strongly hint at a value ${(\ensuremath{\eta}/s)}_{QGP}<2/4\ensuremath{\pi}$ at RHIC. Furthermore, we demonstrate the effect of shear viscosity on pseudorapidity spectra and the mean transverse momentum as a function of rapidity.