TH Heavy Ion Coffee

New opportunities to probe nuclear deformation using high-energy heavy-ion collisions

by Jiangyong Jia (Stony Brook University (US))

Europe/Zurich
Zoom (CERN)

Zoom

CERN

Description
High-energy heavy-ion collisions, a branch of nuclear physics that focus
on study of quark-gluon plama (QGP) and nuclear phase diagram, have
always assumed an initial condition from the nuclear structure physics,
e.g. the Woods-Saxon geometry. Recent progress in hydrodynamic modeling
together with the wealth of precision collective flow data, however,
allow us to not only perform quantitative extractions of the transport
properties of the QGP, but very importantly start to strongly constrain
the initial state of the colliding nuclei. In this talk, I will discuss
the exciting possibility of imaging the shape of atomic nuclei using
precision flow measurements, including the quadruple, triaxial and
octupole deformations. I will discuss how the shape information probed
by heavy ion collision might be different or complementary to those
obtained in the nuclear structure experiments. I will argue how a
carefully planned system scan of stable species in the nuclear chart in  
high-energy nuclear collisions may lead to new direction of research in
nuclear physics.