Elliptic Flow from Minijet Production in Heavy Ion Collisions

Abstract

We calculate the contribution to the elliptic flow observable v2 from two-particle correlations in minijet production in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. We use a minijet production cross section derived in a model inspired by saturation approach to high energy scattering. Resulting differential elliptic flow v2(pT) is an increasing function of pT for transverse momenta below the saturation scale Qs. At higher transverse momenta (pT > Qs) differential flow stops growing and becomes approximately constant, reproducing the elliptic flow saturation data reported by STAR. The centrality dependence of the minijet contribution to v2 is also in good agreement with the data.