Abstract:
Triangular flow has been shown to be an interesting new observable to gain insights about the properties of hot and dense strongly interacting matter as it is produced in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. The potential of triangular flow for constraining the initial state granularity is explored by performing an explicit calculation of the triangularity and the final state anisotropic flow for initial states that exhibit different amounts of fluctuations. We present triangular flow results for Au+Au collisions at the highest RHIC energy calculated in a hybrid approach that includes a non-equilibrium initial evolution and an ideal hydrodynamic expansion with a hadronic afterburner in 3+1 dimensions. Triangular flow results for Pb+Pb collisions at LHC energies employing the same parameters that work at RHIC are compared to ALICE data. In addition, by comparing the hybrid approach calculation with a pure transport approach, the influence of viscosity is studied. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.