Understanding the correlation between elliptic and triangular flow

The relative correlation between the magnitudes of elliptic flow ( v ₂) and triangular flow ( v ₃) has been accurately measured in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC collider. As a function of the centrality of the collision, it changes sign and varies non-monotonically. We show that this is naturally explained by two combined effects. The first effect is a skewness in initial-state fluctuations, which is quantified by the correlation between the geometry-driven elliptic deformation in the reaction plane and the fluctuation-driven triangularity ε₃. We introduce an intensive measure of this skewness, which is generically of order unity and varies little above 5 % centrality. We evaluate its magnitude using Monte Carlo simulations of the initial state, which show that it is sensitive to the nucleon width. The second effect is the fluctuation of impact parameter relative to centrality classifiers used by experiment. The ATLAS collaboration uses two different centrality classifiers, the multiplicity N_ch and the transverse energy E_T . We fit both sets of results for Pb+Pb collisions up to ≈ 40 % centrality with a single parameter, the intensive mixed skewness. Its value inferred from experiment agrees with theoretical expectations.