Deformed Flux Tubes Produce Azimuthal Anisotropy in Heavy Ion Collisions

Abstract

We investigate the azimuthal anisotropy $v_2$ of particle production in nucleus-nucleus collisions in the maximum entropy approach. This necessitates two new phenomenological input parameters $\delta$ and $\lambda_2$ compared with integrated multiplicity distributions. The parameter $\delta$ describes the deformation of a flux tube and can be theoretically calculated in a bag model with a bag constant which depends on the density of surrounding flux tubes. The parameter $\lambda_2$ defines the anisotropy of the particle distribution in momentum space and can be connected to $\delta$ via the uncertainty relation. In this framework we compute the anisotropy $v_2$ as a function of centrality, transverse momentum and rapidity in qualitative agreement with LHC data.