Direct photon spectrum and elliptic flow produced from Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.76$ TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider within an integrated hydrokinetic model

Abstract

The photon transverse momentum spectrum and its anisotropy from Pb+Pb collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider energy $\sqrt {s_{NN}}=2.76$ TeV are investigated within the integrated hydrokinetic model (iHKM). Photon production is accumulated from the different processes at the various stages of relativistic heavy ion collisions: from the primary hard photons of very early stage of parton collisions to the thermal photons from equilibrated quark-gluon and hadron gas stages. Along the way a hadronic medium evolution is treated in two distinct, in a sense opposite, approaches: chemically equilibrated and chemically frozen system expansion. Studying the centrality dependence of the results obtained allows us to conclude that a relatively strong transverse momentum anisotropy of thermal radiation is suppressed by prompt photon emission which is an isotropic. We find out that this effect is getting stronger as centrality increases because of the simultaneous increase in the relative contribution of prompt photons in the soft part of the spectra. The substantial results obtained in iHKM with nonzero viscosity ($η/s=0.08$) for photon spectra and $v_2$ coefficients are mostly within the error bars of experimental data, but there is some systematic underestimation of both observables for the near central events. We claim that a situation could be significantly improved if an additional photon radiation that accompanies the presence of a deconfined environment is included. Since a matter of a space-time layer where hadronization takes place is actively involved in anisotropic transverse flow, both positive contributions to the spectra and $v_2$ are considerable, albeit such an argument needs further research and elaboration.