{
  "id": "nucl-th/0104073",
  "version": "v3",
  "published": "2001-04-24T20:53:21.000Z",
  "updated": "2003-12-03T01:53:00.000Z",
  "title": "Saturation of Elliptic Flow and the Transport Opacity of the Gluon Plasma at RHIC",
  "authors": [
    "Denes Molnar",
    "Miklos Gyulassy"
  ],
  "comment": "Long overdue update with final published version + erratum (13 pages, 17 EPS figs)",
  "journal": "Nucl.Phys.A697:495-520,2002; Erratum-ibid.A703:893-894,2002",
  "doi": "10.1016/S0375-9474(01)01224-6",
  "categories": [
    "nucl-th"
  ],
  "abstract": "Differential elliptic flow and particle spectra are calculated taking into account the finite transport opacity of the gluon plasma produced in Au+Au at Ecm ~ 130 A GeV at RHIC. Covariant numerical solutions of the ultrarelativistic Boltzmann equation are obtained using the MPC parton cascade technique. For typical pQCD (~3 mb) elastic cross sections, extreme initial gluon densities, dN/deta ~ 15000, are required to reproduce the elliptic flow saturation pattern reported by STAR. However, we show that the solutions depend mainly on the transport opacity, $\\chi=\\int dz \\sigma_t\\rho_g$, and thus the data can also be reproduced with dN/deta ~ 1000, but with extreme elastic parton cross sections, \\~45 mb. We demonstrate that the spectra and elliptic flow are dominated by numerical artifacts unless parton subdivisions ~100-1000 are applied to retain Lorentz covariance for RHIC initial conditions.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v3",
      "updated": "2003-12-03T01:53:00.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "subjects": [
      "12.38.Mh",
      "24.85.+p",
      "25.75.-q"
    ],
    "keywords": [
      "elliptic flow",
      "transport opacity",
      "gluon plasma",
      "artifacts unless parton subdivisions",
      "flow saturation pattern"
    ],
    "tags": [
      "journal article",
      "famous paper"
    ],
    "publication": {
      "publisher": "Elsevier",
      "journal": "Nucl. Phys. A"
    },
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 13,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable",
      "inspire": 555959
    }
  }
}