Event anisotropy in high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions

The predictions of event anisotropy parameters from transport model RQMD are compared with the recent experimental measurements for 158A GeV Pb+Pb collisions. Using the same model, we study the time evolution of event anisotropy at 2A GeV and 158A GeV for several colliding systems. For the first time, both momentum and configuration space information are studied using the Fourier analysis of the azimuthal angular distribution. We find that, in the model, the combination of the size of the colliding system and nuclear passing time plays a dominant role in determining the behavior of the anisotropy parameters. [S0556-2813(98)05412-0].