Accessing the shape of atomic nuclei with relativistic collisions of isobars

Abstract

Nuclides sharing the same mass number (isobars) are observed ubiquitously along the stability line. While having nearly identical radii, stable isobars can differ in shape, and present in particular different quadrupole deformations. We show that even small differences in these deformations can be probed by relativistic nuclear collisions experiments, where they manifest as deviations from unity in the ratios of elliptic flow coefficients taken between isobaric systems. Collider experiments with isobars represent, thus, a unique means to obtain quantitative information about the geometric shape of atomic nuclei.

5 pages; 2 figures; 1 table

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Cited by in corpus (15)

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• Determine the neutron skin type by relativistic isobaric collisions
• Imaging the initial condition of heavy-ion collisions and nuclear structure across the nuclide chart
• Separating the impact of nuclear skin and nuclear deformation in high-energy isobar collisions
• Scaling approach to nuclear structure in high-energy heavy-ion collisions
• Ratios of collective flow observables in high-energy isobar collisions are insensitive to final state interactions
• Anatomy of octupole correlations in ${}^{96}$Zr with a symmetry-restored multidimensionally-constrained covariant density functional theory
• Inferring nuclear structure from heavy isobar collisions using Trajectum
• Impact of nuclear deformation on collective flow observables in relativistic U+U collisions
• Impact of nuclear structure on the CME background in ${}_{44}^{96}$Ru + ${}_{44}^{96}$Ru and ${}_{40}^{96}$Zr + ${}_{40}^{96}$Zr collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7 $\sim$ 200 GeV from a multiphase transport model
• Impact of Multiplicity Fluctuations on Entropy Scaling Across System Size
• Momentum dependent flow correlations in deformed nuclei at collision energies available at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
• An overview of new measurements of flow, chirality, and vorticity from STAR experiment