Flow harmonics within an analytically solvable viscous hydrodynamic model

Abstract

Based on a viscous hydrodynamic model with anisotropically perturbed Gubser flow and isothermal Cooper-Frye freezeout at early times, we analytically compute the flow harmonics $v_n(p_T)$ and study how they scale with the harmonic number $n$ and transverse momentum, as well as the system size, shear and bulk viscosity coefficients, and collision energy. In particular, we find that the magnitude of shear viscous corrections grows linearly with $n$. The mixing between different harmonics is also discussed. While this model is rather simple as compared to realistic heavy-ion collisions, we argue that the scaling results presented here may be meaningfully compared to experimental data collected over many energies, system sizes, and geometries.

19 pages, v2 with more discussion and references. To be published in Physical Review D