Momentum anisotropies in the quark coalescence model

Abstract

Based on the quark coalescence model, we derive relations among the momentum anisotropies of mesons and baryons in relativistic heavy ion collisions from a given, but arbitrary azimuthal distribution for the partons. These relations allow us to estimate the higher-order anisotropies in the initial partonic matter from the measured hadronic anisotropies. Besides the familiar even Fourier coefficients such as the elliptic flow, we also pay attention to odd Fourier coefficients such as the directed flow, which has been observed at finite rapidity even at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider energies.