Partonic effects on higher-order anisotropic flows in relativistic heavy-ion collisions RID A-2398-2009

Abstract

Higher-order anisotropic flows v(4) and v(6) of charged hadrons in heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider are studied in a multiphase transport model that has previously been used successfully for describing the elliptic flow v(2) of identified hadrons in these collisions. We find that the same parton scattering cross section of about 10 mb used in explaining the measured v(2) of charged hadrons can also reproduce the recent data on their v(4) and v(6) from Au+Au collisions at roots=200A GeV. It is further found that v(4) is a more sensitive probe of the initial partonic dynamics in these collisions than v(2). Moreover, higher-order parton anisotropic flows are non-negligible and satisfy the scaling relation v(n,q)(p(T))similar tov(2,q)(n/2)(p(T)), which leads naturally to the observed similar scaling relation among hadron anisotropic flows when the coalescence model is used to describe hadron production from the partonic matter.