Anisotropic flow of strange particles in heavy ion collisions at RHIC energies

Abstract

Anisotropic flow of K's, anti-K's, and lambdas is studied in heavy ion collisions at SPS and RHIC energies within the microscopic quark-gluon string model. At SPS energy the directed flow of kaons differs considerably at midrapidity from that of antikaons, while at RHIC energy kaon and antikaon flows coincide. The change is attributed to formation of dense meson-dominated matter at RHIC, where the differences in interaction cross-sections of hadrons become unimportant. The directed flows of strange particles, $v_1^{K,\bar{K}, \Lambda}(y)$, have universal negative slope at $|y| \leq 2$ at RHIC. The elliptic flow of strange hadrons is developed at midrapidity at times 3<t<10 fm/c. It increases almost linearly with rising p_t and stops to rise at p_t < 1.5 GeV/c reaching the same saturation value $v_2 ^{K,\Lambda}(p_t) \approx 10%$ in accord with experimental results.