Inferring nuclear structure from heavy isobar collisions using Trajectum

Abstract

Nuclei with equal number of baryons but varying proton number (isobars) have many commonalities, but differ in both electric charge and nuclear structure. Relativistic collisions of such isobars provide unique opportunities to study the variation of the magnetic field, provided the nuclear structure is well understood. In this Letter we simulate collisions using several state-of-the-art parametrizations of the ${}_{40}^{96}$Zr and ${}_{44}^{96}$Ru isobars and show that a comparison with the exciting STAR measurement arXiv:2109.00131 of ultrarelativistic collisions can uniquely identify the structure of both isobars. This not only provides an urgently needed understanding of the structure of the Zirconium and Ruthenium isobars, but also paves the way for more detailed studies of nuclear structure using relativistic heavy ion collisions.

10 pages, 6 figures. Trajectum can be downloaded at https://sites.google.com/view/govertnijs/trajectum, output files and plotting routines at http://wilkevanderschee.nl

References in corpus (6)

• Systematic Measurements of Identified Particle Spectra in pp, d+Au and Au+Au Collisions from STAR
• Test the chiral magnetic effect with isobaric collisions
• Multi-particle and charge-dependent azimuthal correlations in heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider
• Scaling approach to nuclear structure in high-energy heavy-ion collisions
• Probing nuclear structure with mean transverse momentum in relativistic isobar collisions
• B(E2) Predictions for Even-Even Nuclei in the Differential Equation Model

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Determination of the neutron skin of ${}^{208}$Pb from ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions
• Imaging the initial condition of heavy-ion collisions and nuclear structure across the nuclide chart
• Exploring the Nuclear Shape Phase Transition in Ultra-Relativistic ${}^{129}$Xe+${}^{129}$Xe Collisions at the LHC
• Impact of nuclear structure on longitudinal flow decorrelations in high-energy isobar collisions
• Impact of initial fluctuations and nuclear deformations in isobar collisions
• Effect of nuclear structure on particle production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions using the AMPT model
• Origin of octupole deformation softness in atomic nuclei
• Determining the neutron skin thickness by relativistic semi-isobaric collisions
• Probing cold nuclear matter with energy correlators
• Benchmarking nuclear matrix elements of $0\nu \beta \beta$ decay with high-energy nuclear collisions
• Impact of the pre-equilibrium phase for the determination of nuclear geometry in high-energy isobar collisions