Perturbative QCD Calculations of Elliptic Flow and Shear Viscosity in Au+Au Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV

Abstract

The elliptic flow $v_2$ and the ratio of the shear viscosity over the entropy density, $η/s$, of gluon matter are calculated from the perturbative QCD (pQCD) based parton cascade Boltzmann approach of multiparton scatterings. For Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$A GeV the gluon plasma generates large $v_2$ values measured at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Standard pQCD yields $η/s\approx 0.08-0.15$ as small as the lower bound found from the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory conjecture.

4 pages, 6 figures, new results added in Figs 1, 2, and 3, version published in PRL