Abstract
We perform a principal component analysis (PCA) of in event-by-event hydrodynamic simulations of Pb+Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The PCA procedure identifies two dominant contributions to the two-particle correlation function, which together capture 99.9% of the squared variance. We find that the subleading flow (which is the largest source of flow factorization breaking in hydrodynamics) is predominantly a response to the radial excitations of a third-order eccentricity. We present a systematic study of the hydrodynamic response to these radial excitations in 2+1D viscous hydrodynamics. Finally, we construct a good geometrical predictor for the orientation angle and magnitude of the leading and subleading flows using two Fourier modes of the initial geometry.
5 More- Received 3 February 2015
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.91.044902
©2015 American Physical Society