Universal Flow in the First fm/c at RHIC Original Research Article

We will show how both elliptic and radial flow generated during the first fm/c at RHIC is independent of the state of matter and depends only on the initial energy density profile. Descriptions based on partons or classical fields, thermalized or highly anisotropic, all lead to the same collective velocity given a few easily satisfied conditions. This significantly narrows the uncertainty for initializing hydrodynamic prescriptions.