Heavy Ion Collisions at Relativistic Energies: Testing a Nuclear Matter at High Baryon and Isospin Density

Abstract

We show that the phenomenology of isospin effects on heavy ion reactions at intermediate energies (few AGeV range) is extremely rich and can allow a ``direct'' study of the covariant structure of the isovector interaction in the hadron medium. We work within a relativistic transport frame, beyond a cascade picture, consistently derived from effective Lagrangians, where isospin effects are accounted for in the mean field and collision terms. Rather sensitive observables are proposed from collective flows (``differential'' flows) and from pion/kaon production (${\pi }^{-}/{\pi }^{+}$, $K^0/K^{+}$ yields). For the latter point relevant non-equilibrium effects are stressed. The possibility of the transition to a mixed hadron-quark phase, at high baryon and isospin density, is finally suggested. Some signatures could come from an expected ``neutron trapping'' effect.

8 pages, 4 figures, espcrc1 (latex) style. Conf. "Perspectives in Hadronic Physics", ICTP Trieste May 2006, Nucl.Phys. A, to appear

References in corpus (2)

• Constraints on the high-density nuclear equation of state from the phenomenology of compact stars and heavy-ion collisions
• Testing Deconfinement at High Isospin Density

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Progress of Quantum Molecular Dynamics model and its applications in Heavy Ion Collisions
• In-medium effects in strangeness production in heavy-ion collisions at (sub-)threshold energies
• Application of density dependent parametrization models to asymmetric nuclear matter
• Nuclear reaction measurements of 80.5 MeV/u 12C beam bombarding on C, W, Cu, Au, Pb targets