DOI: 10.1146/annurev-nucl-102212-170540 ISSN:

Collective Flow and Viscosity in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

Ulrich Heinz, Raimond Snellings
  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

We review collective flow, its anisotropies, and its event-to-event fluctuations in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, as well as the extraction of the specific shear viscosity of quark–gluon plasma from collective flow data collected in heavy-ion collision experiments at RHIC and the LHC. We emphasize the similarities between the Big Bang of our universe and the Little Bangs created in heavy-ion collisions.