Effect of space-momentum correlations on the constituent quark number scaling of hadron elliptic flows

Abstract

Using models ranging from schematic one with a simple quark distribution to more realistic blast wave, we study the elliptic flow of hadrons produced from coalescence of quarks and antiquarks in the quark-gluon plasma that is formed in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. In particular, we study effects due to azimuthal anisotropy in the local transverse momentum distribution of quarks, as generated by their position-momentum correlations as a result of radial flow and/or jet quenching. We find that even if quarks have large local non-elliptic anisotropic flow, the elliptic flow of produced hadrons can still scale with their constituent quark numbers. This scaling is, however, broken if the radial flow of coalescing quarks is anisotropic and/or if the momentum dispersion of quarks inside hadrons is included.