Anisotropic flow and the valence quark skeleton of hadrons

Abstract

We study transverse momentum anisotropies, in particular, the elliptic flow $v_2$ due to the interference effect sourced by valence quarks in high-energy hadron-hadron collisions. Our main formula is derived as the high-energy (eikonal) limit of the impact-parameter dependent cross section in quantum field theory, which agrees with that in terms of the impact parameter in the classical picture. As a quantitative assessment of the interference effect, we calculate $v_2$ in the azimuthal distribution of gluons at a comprehensive coverage of the impact parameter and the transverse momentum in high-energy pion-pion collisions. In a broad range of the impact parameter, a sizable amount of $v_2$, comparable with that produced due to saturated dense gluons or final-state interactions, is found to develop. In our calculations, the valence sector of the pion wave function is obtained numerically from the Basis Light-Front Quantization, a non-perturbative light-front Hamiltonian approach. And our formalism is generic and can be applied to other small collision systems like proton-proton collisions.