Anisotropic flow in Cu plus Au collisions at root s(N N)=200GeV RID A-2398-2009

Abstract

The anisotropic flow of charged hadrons in asymmetric Cu+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider is studied in a multiphase transport model. Compared with previous results for symmetric Au+Au collisions, charged hadrons produced around midrapidity in asymmetric collisions are found to have a stronger directed flow v(1) and their elliptic flow v(2) is also more sensitive to the parton scattering cross section. Although higher order flows v(3) and v(4) are small at all rapidities, both v(1) and v(2) in these collisions are appreciable and show an asymmetry in forward and backward rapidities.