Centrality and pseudorapidity dependence of elliptic flow for charged hadrons in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 200 GeV

This paper describes the measurement of elliptic flow for charged particles in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(sNN)=200 GeV using the PHOBOS detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The measured azimuthal anisotropy is presented over a wide range of pseudorapidity for three broad collision centrality classes for the first time at this energy. Two distinct methods of extracting the flow signal were used in order to reduce systematic uncertainties. The elliptic flow falls sharply with increasing eta at 200 GeV for all the centralities studied, as observed for minimum-bias collisions at sqrt(sNN)=130 GeV.