Investigating the Role of Quantum Entanglement in Heavy Ion Collisions through Elliptic Flow (2406.10129v3)

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between initial spatial anisotropy and final state momentum anisotropy in heavy ion collisions through the analysis of elliptic flow ($v_2$) as a function of transverse momentum ($p_T$). Building upon previous studies on thermalization in heavy ion collisions using transverse momentum distributions, we extend the analysis to the $p_T$ dependence of $v_2$ in Pb-Pb and Xe-Xe collisions. By employing a two-component model to extract the thermal and hard scattering contributions to the elliptic flow, we aim to gain further insights into the role of quantum entanglement in the rapid thermalization and collective behavior of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP).