Event-by-event distributions of azimuthal asymmetries in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions

Relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics is a common tool to describe the space-time evolution of the strongly interacting matter created in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. For a proper comparison to experimental data, fluid-dynamical calculations have to be performed on an event-by-event basis. Therefore, fluid dynamics should be able to reproduce, not only the event-averaged momentum anisotropies, < v(n)>, but also their distributions. In this paper, we investigate the event-by-event distributions of the initial-state and momentum anisotropies epsilon(n) and v(n), and their correlations. We demonstrate that the event-by-event distributions of relative v(n) fluctuations are almost equal to the event-by-event distributions of corresponding epsilon(n) fluctuations, allowing experimental determination of the relative anisotropy fluctuations of the initial state. Furthermore, the correlation c(v(2), v(4)) turns out to be sensitive to the viscosity of the fluid providing an additional constraint to the properties of the strongly interacting matter.