Imaging Shapes of Atomic Nuclei in High-Energy Nuclear Collisions

Abstract

Atomic nuclei are self-organized, many-body quantum systems bound by strong nuclear forces within femtometer-scale space. These complex systems manifest a variety of shapes, traditionally explored using non-invasive spectroscopic techniques at low energies. However, at these energies, their instantaneous shapes are obscured by long-timescale quantum fluctuations, making direct observation challenging. Here we introduce the ``collective flow assisted nuclear shape imaging'' method, which images the nuclear global shape by colliding them at ultrarelativistic speeds and analyzing the collective response of outgoing debris. This technique captures a collision-specific snapshot of the spatial matter distribution within the nuclei, which, through the hydrodynamic expansion, imprints patterns on the particle momentum distribution observed in detectors. We benchmark this method in collisions of ground state Uranium-238 nuclei, known for their elongated, axial-symmetric shape. Our findings show a large deformation with a slight deviation from axial symmetry in the nuclear ground state, aligning broadly with previous low-energy experiments. This approach offers a new method for imaging nuclear shapes, enhances our understanding of the initial conditions in high-energy collisions and addresses the important issue of nuclear structure evolution across energy scales.

16 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Status and Future of Nuclear Matrix Elements for Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay: A Review
• Transverse-momentum fluctuations in relativistic heavy-ion collisions from event-by-event viscous hydrodynamics
• Evidence of Hexadecapole Deformation in Uranium-238 at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
• Measurement of the azimuthal anisotropy of charged-particle production in Xe+Xe collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.44$ TeV with the ATLAS detector
• The shape of gold
• Structure of ${}^{128,129,130}$Xe through multi-reference energy density functional calculations

Cited by in corpus (29)

• Ab initio study of the beryllium isotopes ${}^7$Be to ${}^{12}$Be
• Imaging Freeze-out Sources and Extracting Strong Interaction Parameters in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Imaging nuclear shape through anisotropic and radial flow in high-energy heavy-ion collisions
• Directly probing existence of $\alpha$-cluster structure in ${}^{20}$Ne by relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Extraction of ground-state nuclear deformations from ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions: Nuclear structure physics context
• Signature of the $\alpha$-clustering structure of Light Nuclei in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions
• Nuclear cluster structure effect in ${}^{16}$O+${}^{16}$O collisions at the top RHIC energy
• Impact parameter dependence of anisotropic flow: Bayesian reconstruction in ultracentral nucleus-nucleus collisions
• System size and energy dependence of the mean transverse momentum fluctuations at the LHC
• Subspace-projected multireference covariant density functional theory
• Observation of long-range collective flow in OO and NeNe collisions and implications for nuclear structure studies
• Correlation between particle spectra and elliptic flow
• Scaling approach to rigid and soft nuclear deformation through flow fluctuations in high-energy nuclear collisions
• Probing Nuclear Geometry through Multi-Particle Azimuthal Correlations and Rapidity-Even Dipolar Flow in ${}^{16}$O+${}^{16}$O Collisions
• Exploring nuclear structure with multiparticle azimuthal correlations at the LHC
• Disentangling effects of nucleon size and nucleus structure in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Effect of $\alpha$-clusters on particle production in O$-$O and p$-$O collisions at LHC energies
• The size of the quark-gluon plasma in ultracentral collisions: impact of initial density fluctuations on the average transverse momentum
• Benchmarking nuclear matrix elements of $0\nu \beta \beta$ decay with high-energy nuclear collisions
• Imprints of octupole collectivity in uranium-238 on relativistic heavy-ion flow observables
• Influence of Cluster Configurations and Nucleon--Nucleon Scattering Cross-Section on Stopping Power in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Topical issue on the intersection of low-energy nuclear structure and high-energy nuclear collisions
• Unlocking the initial neutron density distribution from the two-pion HBT correlation function in heavy-ion collisions
• A novel filtering method for generating desired density profiles of colliding nuclei
• Imaging two-body correlations in atomic nuclei via low- and high-energy processes
• High-order fluctuations of temperature in hot QCD matter
• Suppression of elliptic anisotropy inside jets: A new perspective for jet quenching
• Collective effects in strong interaction processes: experimental highlights
• A comparison study of collisions at relativistic energies involving light nuclei