Collective flow and viscosity in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

Collective flow, its anisotropies and its event-to-event fluctuations in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, and the extraction of the specific shear viscosity of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) from collective flow data collected in heavy-ion collision experiments at RHIC and LHC are reviewed. Specific emphasis is placed on the similarities between the Big Bang of our universe and the Little Bangs created in heavy-ion collisions.Comment: 38 pages (incl. 11 figures), 145 references. Invited review prepared for Annual Review in Nuclear and Particle Physics 63 (2013