Viscosity information from relativistic nuclear collisions: how perfect is the fluid observed at RHIC?
Relativistic viscous hydrodynamic fits to Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider data on the centrality dependence of multiplicity, transverse, and elliptic flow for square root s = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions are presented. For standard (Glauber-type) initial conditions, while data on the integrated elliptic flow coefficient v(2) are consistent with a ratio of viscosity over entropy density up to eta/s approximately 0.16, data on minimum bias v(2) seem to favor a much smaller viscosity over entropy ratio, below the bound from the anti-de Sitter conformal field theory conjecture. Some caveats on this result are discussed.
Romatschke
Paul
P
Institute for Nuclear Theory, University of Washington, Box 351550, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
Romatschke
Ulrike
U