The neutron skin effect in Pb+Pb collisions at 2.76A TeV at the LHC

Abstract

Collisions of lead nuclei at relativistic energies provide valuable insight into the properties of the quark gluon plasma formed in such collisions where the initial geometry and density profile play a crucial role in governing the subsequent evolution of the produced hot and dense fireball. The neutron skin thickness resulting from the difference between the neutron and proton density distributions in neutron rich lead nuclei plays an important role in nuclear structure studies. In this work we investigate the impact of neutron skin on the space time evolution of the fireball formed in Pb+Pb collisions at 2.76A TeV at the LHC and analyze how the presence of neutron skin affect bulk observables sensitive to the initial nuclear structure. The time evolution of initial profile along with the average $p_T$, particle spectra and anisotropic flow parameters are estimated to investigate the effect of neutron skin on these observables. The initial spatial anisotropy of the fireball is found to be affected by the neutron skin thickness significantly especially for the peripheral collisions. This leads to a substantial enhancement of the elliptic flow of hadrons with an even stronger effect observed for photons. In addition, the effect is found to be more pronounced for lower beam energy collisions of lead nuclei.