Is early thermalization achieved only near midrapidity at RHIC ?

Abstract

The pseudorapidity dependence of elliptic flow in Au+Au collisions at 130 $A$ GeV is studied within a full three-dimensional hydrodynamic model in the light-cone coordinate. First, we prepare two initial conditions in the hydrodynamic model for analyzing elliptic flow. Both initial conditions lead to reasonable agreement with single particle spectra in central and semi-central collisions. Next, by using these hydrodynamic simulations, we compare elliptic flow as a function of pseudorapidity with experimental data recently measured by the PHOBOS Collaboration. Our results are in agreement with experimental data only near midrapidity. This suggests that thermalization in the early stage of collisions is not achieved in forward and backward rapidity regions.