Centrality and Transverse Momentum Dependence of Elliptic Flow of Multistrange Hadrons and φ Meson in Au+Au Collisions at sNN=200 GeV

In this paper, we present high precision measurements of elliptic flow near midrapidity (|y|<1.0) for multistrange hadrons and φ meson as a function of centrality and transverse momentum in Au+Au collisions at center of mass energy $\sqrt{sNN}$=200 GeV. We observe that the transverse momentum dependence of φ and Ωv₂ is similar to that of π and p, respectively, which may indicate that the heavier strange quark flows as strongly as the lighter up and down quarks. This observation constitutes a clear piece of evidence for the development of partonic collectivity in heavy-ion collisions at the top RHIC energy. Number of constituent quark scaling is found to hold within statistical uncertainty for both 0%-30% and 30%-80% collision centrality. Finally, there is an indication of the breakdown of previously observed mass ordering between φ and proton v₂ at low transverse momentum in the 0%-30% centrality range, possibly indicating late hadronic interactions affecting the proton v₂.