Elliptic flow for phi mesons and (anti)deuterons in Au+Au collisions at square root of sNN=200 GeV

Phys Rev Lett. 2007 Aug 3;99(5):052301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.052301. Epub 2007 Jul 31.

Abstract

Differential elliptic flow (v(2)) for phi mesons and (anti)deuterons (d)d is measured for Au+Au collisions at square root of sNN=200 GeV. The v(2) for phi mesons follows the trend of lighter pi+/- and K+/- mesons, suggesting that ordinary hadrons interacting with standard hadronic cross sections are not the primary driver for elliptic flow development. The v(2) values for (d)d suggest that elliptic flow is additive for composite particles. This further validation of the universal scaling of v(2) per constituent quark for baryons and mesons suggests that partonic collectivity dominates the transverse expansion dynamics.