Webpages tagged with «elliptic flow»

The QGP behaves like a low-viscosity liquid and exhibits a collective, multi-harmonic azimuthally anisotropic expansion pattern (flow), which can be described in terms of a Fourier series. The various Fourier components v_n originate from pressure gradients, due to the collision geometry in non-central collisions (typically the quadrupole component v₂, called elliptic flow) or to fluctuations in the initial nucleon density (typically triangular flow v₃ and higher order components).