Elliptic flow of ϕ mesons and strange quark collectivity

Abstract

Based on a multiphase transport model, we have studied the elliptic flow ${v}_{2}$ of \ensuremath{\phi} mesons from the reconstructed ${K}^{+}{K}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ decay channel at the top Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider energy at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The dependences of ${v}_{2}$ on transverse momentum ${p}_{T}$ and collision centrality are presented and the rescattering effect of \ensuremath{\phi} mesons in the hadronic phase is also investigated. The results show that experimental measurement of ${v}_{2}$ for \ensuremath{\phi} mesons can retain the early collision information before the \ensuremath{\phi} decays and that the \ensuremath{\phi} ${v}_{2}$ value obeys the constituent quark number scaling that has been observed for other mesons and baryons. Our study indicates that the \ensuremath{\phi} ${v}_{2}$ mostly reflects partonic-level collectivity developed during the early stage of the nucleus-nucleus collision and the strange and light up/down quarks have developed similar angular anistropy properties at the hadronization.