Pseudorapidity correlations in heavy ion collisions from viscous fluid dynamics

Abstract

We demonstrate by explicit calculations in 3+1 dimensional viscous relativistic fluid dynamics how two-particle pseudorapidity correlation functions in heavy ion collisions at the LHC and RHIC depend on the number of particle producing sources and the transport properties of the produced medium. In particular, we present results for the Legendre coefficients of the two-particle pseudorapidity correlation function, an,m, in Pb+Pb collisions at 2760 GeV and Au+Au collisions at 200 GeV from viscous hydrodynamics with three dimensionally fluctuating initial conditions. Our results suggest that the an,m provide important constraints on initial state fluctuations in heavy ion collisions.