Initial state fluctuations and higher harmonic flow in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

A framework combining Yang-Mills dynamics of the pre-equilibrium glasma with relativistic viscous hydrodynamic evolution of the quark–gluon plasma and hadron gas phases is presented. Event-by-event fluctuations of nucleon positions and color charges are taken into account, leading to negative binomial fluctuations of gluon multiplicities. Experimental anisotropic flow coefficients v 2 – v 5 of charged hadron distributions in heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider are well described. Furthermore, event-by-event distributions of v 2 , v 3 and v 4 measured by the ATLAS collaboration are reproduced.