Tracing -differential radial flow from blast-wave analytics to quark coalescence
Phys. Rev. C 113, 064902 – Published 5 June, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/hk6w-hx6h
Abstract
The observable , which quantifies event-by-event fluctuations of the differential transverse-momentum spectrum, has been proposed as a direct and sensitive probe of radial flow in heavy-ion collisions. Recent measurements at the CERN Large Hadron Collider exhibit a clear mass ordering for pions, kaons, and protons at low and a baryon-meson splitting at intermediate , resembling the well-known features of elliptic flow . In this work, we first derive an analytic expression for within a blast-wave framework that incorporates fluctuations of the freeze-out temperature and radial expansion velocity, and we show that this formulation naturally explains the experimentally observed mass ordering. Furthermore, within a quark coalescence picture, supported by transport simulations using A Multi-Phase Transport model, we demonstrate that the baryon-meson splitting at intermediate emerges dynamically from partonic . This study provides deeper insight into the observable and the collective dynamics of the quark-gluon plasma.