We report the first measurement of charged particle elliptic flow in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement is performed in the central pseudorapidity region (|$\eta$|< 0.8) and transverse momentum range 0.2 < $p_{\rm T}$ < 5.0 GeV/$c$. The elliptic flow signal v$_2$, measured using the 4-particle correlation method, averaged over transverse momentum and pseudorapidity is 0.087 $\pm$ 0.002 (stat) $\pm$ 0.004 (syst) in the 40-50% centrality class. The differential elliptic flow v$_2(p_{\rm T})$ reaches a maximum of 0.2 near $p_{\rm T}$ = 3 GeV/$c$. Compared to RHIC Au-Au collisions at 200 GeV, the elliptic flow increases by about 30%. Some hydrodynamic model predictions which include viscous corrections are in agreement with the observed increase.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 105 (2010) 252302
HEP Data
e-Print: arXiv:1011.3914 | PDF | inSPIRE
CERN-PH-EP-2010-059