Hadronic dissipative effects on transverse dynamics at RHIC

Abstract

We simulate the dynamics of Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) with a hybrid model that treats the quark-gluon plasma macroscopically as an ideal fluid, but models the hadron resonance gas microscopically using a hadronic cascade. We find that much of the mass-ordering pattern for v_2(p_T) observed at RHIC is generated during the hadronic stage due to build-up of additional radial flow. We also find that the mass-ordering pattern is violated for phi meson due to small interaction cross section in the hadron resonance gas.

4 pages, 4 figures. To be published in the proceedings of Quark Matter 2008, Jaipur, India