Nucleon clustering at kinetic freezeout of heavy-ion collisions via path-integral Monte Carlo

Abstract

Clustering of the four-nucleon system at kinetic freezeout conditions is studied using path-integral Monte Carlo techniques. This method seeks to improve upon previous calculations which relied on approximate semiclassical methods or few-body quantum mechanics. Estimates are given for the decay probabilities of the 4N system into various light nuclei decay channels and the strength of spatial correlations is characterized. Additionally, a simple model is presented to describe the impact of this clustering on nucleon multiplicity distributions. The effects of a possible modification of the inter-nucleon interaction due to the close critical line (and hypothetical QCD critical point) on the clustering are also studied.

24 pages, 11 figures, 6 tables; version 3 of this paper; significantly reduced extraneous explanations and technical details and addressed some points raised by others; submitted to Nucl. Phys. A

References in corpus (10)

• Proton number fluctuations in $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.4 GeV Au+Au collisions studied with HADES
• Baryon preclustering at the freeze-out of heavy-ion collisions and light-nuclei production
• Light Nuclei ($d$, $t$) Production in Au + Au Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7 - 200 GeV
• Production of light nuclei at colliders -- coalescence vs. thermal model
• Light nuclei production in relativistic heavy ion collisions from the AMPT model
• Overview of light nuclei production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Light-nuclei production and search for the QCD critical point
• Cluster dynamics studied with the phase-space Minimum Spanning Tree approach
• Many-body forces and nucleon clustering near the QCD critical point
• The QCD phase diagram and statistics friendly distributions

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Examination of background effects on light-nuclei yield ratio in relativistic heavy-ion collisions