Collective expansion at the LHC: Selected ALICE anisotropic flow measurements

Raimond Snellings*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The collective expansion of matter created in collisions of heavy-ions, ranging from collision energies of tens of MeV to a few TeV per nucleon pair, proved to be one of the best probes to study the detailed properties of these unknown states of matter. Collective expansion originates from the initial pressure gradients in the created hot and dense matter. These pressure gradients transform the initial spatial deformations and inhomogeneities of the created matter into momentum anisotropies of the final state particle production, which we call anisotropic flow. These momentum anisotropies are experimentally characterized by so-called flow harmonics. In this paper I review ALICE measurements of the flow harmonics at the CERN Large Hadron Collider and discuss some of the open questions.

Original languageEnglish
Article number124007
JournalJournal of physics. G. Nuclear and particle physics
Volume41
Issue number12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2014

Keywords

  • ALICE
  • Collective flow
  • Heavy ions
  • LHC
  • QGP

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