Initial indications for the production of a strongly coupled plasma in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 2.76$ TeV

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Results from first measurements of charged particle differential elliptic flow, obtained in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 2.76$ TeV with the ALICE detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), are compared to those obtained for Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 0.2$ TeV with the PHENIX detector at BNL's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC).

• The comparisons, made as a function of centrality (cent) or the number of participant pairs ($N_{\text{part}}$) and particle transverse momentum $p_T$, indicate an excellent agreement between the magnitude and trends for the flow coefficients ${v_2(p_T,\text{cent})}$.
• Analysis indicates that the averaged specific viscosity of the quark gluon plasma (QGP) produced in LHC collisions, is similar to that for the strongly coupled QGP produced in RHIC collisions.