Flow and vorticity with varying chemical potential in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Abstract

We study the vorticity patterns in relativistic heavy ion collisions with respect to the collision energy. The collision energy is related to the chemical potential used in the thermal - statistical models that assume approximate chemical equilibrium after the relativistic collision. We use the multiphase transport model (AMPT) to study the vorticity in the initial parton phase as well as the final hadronic phase of the relativistic heavy ion collision. We find that as the chemical potential increases, the vortices are larger in size. Using different definitions of vorticity, we find that vorticity plays a greater role at lower collision energies than at higher collision energies. We also look at other effects of the flow patterns related to the shear viscosity at different collision energies. We find that the shear viscosity obtained is almost a constant with a small decrease at higher collision energies. We also look at the elliptic flow as it is related to viscous effects in the final stages after the collision. Our results indicate that the viscosity plays a greater role at higher chemical potential and lower collision energies.