Investigating the role of electric fields on flow harmonics in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

Abstract Using the blast-wave model, we explore the effect of electric fields on spectra and flow harmonics (especially the elliptic flow) for charged pions and protons. We incorporate the first-order correction to the single-particle distribution function due to the electric fields and the dissipative effect while calculating the invariant yields of hadrons in the Cooper–Frye prescription at the freezeout hypersurface. We find a noticeable correction to the directed and elliptic flow of pions and protons for unidirectional and azimuthal asymmetric electric fields of a magnitude ∼ m π 2 in the transverse plane. Further, we observe mass dependency of the directed flow generated due to the electric fields. The splitting of particle and antiparticle’s elliptic flow due to the electric fields is also discussed.