Extracting the shear viscosity of the quark-gluon plasma from flow in ultra-central heavy-ion collisions

We propose a method for extracting the shear viscosity over entropy density ratio (@h/s) of the quark-gluon plasma from experimental data. We argue that uncertainty due to poor knowledge of the earliest stages of a heavy-ion collision is smallest for ultra-central events. The most precise value of @h/s can thus be obtained from a global fit to p_T-integrated Fourier harmonics of azimuthal correlations. We further outline a method for quantifying the overall uncertainty in the extracted value. Only after a comprehensive and systematic accounting of all sources of uncertainty can a reliable measurement be claimed. In these proceedings we report preliminary results full and final results will be presented in a separate publication.

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4 pages, 2 figures, Proceedings for Quark Matter 2012

quark gluon: plasma
heavy ion: scattering
entropy: density: ratio
viscosity
angular correlation
flow

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