Elliptic Flow from a Hybrid CGC, Full 3D Hydro and Hadronic Cascade Model

Abstract

We investigate the robustness of the discovery of the perfect fluid through comparison of hydrodynamic calculations with the elliptic flow coefficient v_2 at midrapidity in Au+Au collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}}=200 GeV. Employing the Glauber model for initial entropy density distributions, the centrality dependence of v_2 is reasonably reproduced by using an ideal fluid description of the early QGP stage followed by a hadronic cascade in the late hadronic stage. On the other hand, initial conditions based on the Colour Glass Condensate model are found to generate larger elliptic flow due to larger initial eccentricity epsilon. We further predict v_2/epsilon at a fixed impact parameter as a function of collision energy sqrt{s_{NN}} up to the LHC energy.

4 pages, 4 figures, Quark Matter 2006 proceedings; title changed