The VII-th International Conference on the Initial Stages of High-Energy Nuclear Collisions : Initial Stages 2023

Precision probe of the structure of atomic nuclei with heavy-ion collisions

Jun 20, 2023, 2:00 PM

20m

Aud. 2 (H.C. Ørsted)

Oral The initial stages and nuclear structure in heavy-ion collisions Parallel Session 1

Speaker

Emil Gorm Nielsen (University of Copenhagen (DK))

Description

One of the main challenges in nuclear physics is the study of the structure of the atomic nucleus. Recently it has been shown that high-energy heavy-ion collisions, such as those at RHIC and the LHC, can serve as a complimentary study to the low-energy experiments. The heavy-ion collisions provide a snapshot of the nuclear distribution at the time of collisions, thus providing a unique, precise probe of the nuclear structure. We propose new, higher-order cumulants of the anisotropic flow, $v_n$, and the mean transverse momentum, $[p_\mathrm{T}]$, as a probe of the nuclear structure in deformed nuclei. Calculations of the cumulants in Xe-Xe collisions with A Multi-Phase Transport model (AMPT) reveal their significant impact on measurements of the triaxial structure of $^{129}$Xe. Additionally, we show their novel sensitivity to the $\alpha$-cluster structure in $^{16}$O. These new cumulants have high potential in future runs of deformed nuclei at the LHC and will be a crucial component in spanning the bridge between the fields of low-energy nuclear physics at the MeV energy scale and the high-energy heavy-ion physics at the TeV energy scale.

Presentation materials

egnielsen_IS2023.pdf