Energy dependence and fluctuations of anisotropic fow in Pb-Pb collisions at root s(NN)=5:02 and 2:76 TeV

Measurements of anisotropic flow coefficients with two- and multi-particle cumulants for inclusive charged particles in Pb-Pb collisions at sNN=5.02 and 2.76 TeV are reported in the pseudorapidity range |η| < 0.8 and transverse momentum 0.2 < p T < 50 GeV/c. The full data sample collected by the ALICE detector in 2015 (2010), corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 12.7 (2.0) μb −1 in the centrality range 0-80%, is analysed. Flow coefficients up to the sixth flow harmonic (v 6 ) are reported and a detailed comparison among results at the two energies is carried out. The p T dependence of anisotropic flow coefficients and its evolution with respect to centrality and harmonic number n are investigated. An approximate power-law scaling of the form v n (p T ) ∼ p T n/3 is observed for all flow harmonics at low p T (0.2 < p T < 3 GeV/c). At the same time, the ratios v n /v m n/ m are observed to be essentially independent of p T for most centralities up to about p T = 10 GeV/c. Analysing the differences among higher-order cumulants of elliptic flow (v 2 ), which have different sensitivities to flow fluctuations, a measurement of the standardised skewness of the event-by-event v 2 distribution P(v 2 ) is reported and constraints on its higher moments are provided. The Elliptic Power distribution is used to parametrise P(v 2 ), extracting its parameters from fits to cumulants. The measurements are compared to different model predictions in order to discriminate among initial-state models and to constrain the temperature dependence of the shear viscosity to entropy-density ratio.[Figure not available: see fulltext.].