Anisotropic flow and jet quenching in ultra-relativistic U+U collisions

Abstract

Full-overlap U+U collisions provide significantly larger initial energy densities at comparable spatial deformation, and significantly larger deformation and volume at comparable energy density, than semicentral Au+Au collisions. We show quantitatively that this provides a long lever arm for studying the hydrodynamic behavior of elliptic flow in much larger and denser collision systems and the predicted non-linear path-length dependence of radiative parton energy loss.

4 pages, incl. 5 figures. First figure of v1 removed due to space limitations. Title changed by journal request. Minor other changes and a few references added or updated. This version accepted by Physical Review Letters