Probing nuclear quadrupole deformation from correlation of elliptic flow and transverse momentum in heavy ion collisions

Abstract

In heavy ion collisions, elliptic flow $v_2$ and radial flow, characterized by event-wise average transverse momentum $[p_{\mathrm{T}}]$, are related to the shape and size of the overlap region, which are sensitive to the shape of colliding atomic nuclei. The Pearson correlation coefficient between $v_2$ and $[p_{\mathrm{T}}]$, ${\rho }_2$, was found to be particularly sensitive to the quadrupole deformation parameter $\beta$ that is traditionally measured in low energy experiments. Built on earlier insight that the prolate deformation $\beta >0$ reduces the ${\rho }_2$ in ultra-central collisions (UCC), we show that the prolate deformation $\beta <0$ enhances the value of ${\rho }_2$. As $\beta >0$ and $\beta <0$ are the two extremes of triaxiality, the strength and sign of $v_2^2-[p_{\mathrm{T}}]$ correlation can be used to provide valuable information on the triaxiality of the nucleus. Our study provide further arguments for using the hydrodynamic flow as a precision tool to directly image the deformation of the atomic nuclei at extremely short time scale ($<10^{-24}$s).

13 pages, 10 figures, update to the Accepted version

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Cited by in corpus (23)

• Probing triaxial deformation of atomic nuclei in high-energy heavy ion collisions
• Evidence of the triaxial structure of ${}^{129}$Xe at the Large Hadron Collider
• Separating the impact of nuclear skin and nuclear deformation in high-energy isobar collisions
• Correlations between flow and transverse momentum in Xe+Xe and Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC with the ATLAS detector: a probe of the heavy-ion initial state and nuclear deformation
• 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
• The shape of gold
• Probing neutron-skin thickness with free spectator neutrons in ultracentral high-energy isobaric collisions
• Impact of nuclear deformation on collective flow observables in relativistic U+U collisions
• Free spectator nucleons in ultracentral relativistic heavy-ion collisions as a probe of neutron skin
• Examination of nucleon distribution with Bayesian imaging for isobar collisions
• Imaging nuclear shape through anisotropic and radial flow in high-energy heavy-ion collisions
• Impact of event activity variable on the ratio of observables in isobar collisions
• Determining the neutron skin thickness by relativistic semi-isobaric collisions
• Impact of quadrupole deformation on intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions
• Deformation probes for light nuclei in their collisions at relativistic energies
• 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
• Elliptic flow of strange and multi-strange hadrons in isobar collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 200 GeV at RHIC
• Benchmarking nuclear matrix elements of $0\nu \beta \beta$ decay with high-energy nuclear collisions
• Disentangling effects of nucleon size and nucleus structure in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Impact of the pre-equilibrium phase for the determination of nuclear geometry in high-energy isobar collisions
• Non-Monotonicity of $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ Correlations in Au + Au Collisions at RHIC