Centrality and transverse momentum dependence of elliptic flow of multi-strange hadrons and $phi$ meson in Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV


Abstract in English

We present high precision measurements of elliptic flow near midrapidity ($|y|<1.0$) for multi-strange hadrons and $phi$ meson as a function of centrality and transverse momentum in Au+Au collisions at center of mass energy $sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 200 GeV. We observe that the transverse momentum dependence of $phi$ and $Omega$ $v_{2}$ is similar to that of $pi$ and $p$, respectively, which may indicate that the heavier strange quark flows as strongly as the lighter up and down quarks. This observation constitutes a clear piece of evidence for the development of partonic collectivity in heavy-ion collisions at the top RHIC energy. Number of constituent quark scaling is found to hold within statistical uncertainty for both 0-30$%$ and 30-80$%$ collision centrality. There is an indication of the breakdown of previously observed mass ordering between $phi$ and proton $v_{2}$ at low transverse momentum in the 0-30$%$ centrality range, possibly indicating late hadronic interactions affecting the proton $v_{2}$.

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