Effect of resonance decays on hadron elliptic flows

Abstract

The influence of resonance decays on the elliptic flows of stable hadrons is studied in the quark coalescence model. Although difference between the elliptic flow of pions from resonance decays, except the rho meson, and that of directly produced pions is appreciable, those for other stable hadrons are small. Since there are more pions from the decays of rho mesons than from other resonances, including resonance decays can only account partially the deviation of final pion elliptic flow from the observed scaling of hadron elliptic flows, i.e., the hadron elliptic flow per quark is the same at same transverse momentum per quark. The remaining deviation can be explained by including the effect due to the quark momentum distribution inside hadrons.

13 pages and 5 figures, version pubblished in PRC, updated references and figures