We present measurements of the excitation function of elliptic flow at midrapidity in Au+Au collisions at beam energies from 0.09 to 1.49 GeV per nucleon. For the integral flow, we discuss the ...interplay between collective expansion and spectator shadowing for three centrality classes. A complete excitation function of transverse momentum dependence of elliptic flow is presented for the first time in this energy range, revealing a rapid change with incident energy below 0.4 AGeV, followed by an almost perfect scaling at the higher energies. The equation of state of compressed nuclear matter is addressed through comparisons to microscopic transport model calculations.
Four different combinations of 9644Ru and 9640Zr nuclei, both as projectile and target, were investigated at the same bombarding energy of 400A MeV using a 4pi detector. The degree of isospin mixing ...between projectile and target nucleons is mapped across a large portion of the phase space using two different isospin-tracer observables, the number of measured protons and the tritium to 3He yield ratio. The experimental results show that the global equilibrium is not reached even in the most central collisions. Quantitative measures of stopping and mixing are extracted from the data. They are found to exhibit a quite strong sensitivity to the in-medium ( n,n) cross section used in microscopic transport calculations.
Detailed studies of the azimuthal dependence of the mean fragment and flow energies in the Au+Au and Xe+CsI systems are reported as a function of incident energy and centrality. Comparisons between ...data and model calculations show that the flow energy values along different azimuthal directions could be viewed as snapshots of the fireball expansion with different exposure times. For the same number of participating nucleons more transversally elongated participant shapes from the heavier system produce less collective transverse energy. Good agreement with Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck calculations is obtained for a soft nuclear equation of state.
The incident energy at which the azimuthal distributions in semicentral heavy-ion collisions change from in-plane to out-of-plane enhancement —
E
tran is studied as a function of mass of emitted ...particles, their transverse momentum and centrality for Au+Au collisions. The analysis is performed in a reference frame rotated with the sidewards flow angle (
Θ
flow) relative to the beam axis.
A systematic decrease of
E
tran as function of mass of the reaction products, their transverse momentum and collision centrality is evidenced.
The predictions of a microscopic transport model (IQMD) are compared with the experimental results.
We report on the first analysis of directed and elliptic flow with the new method of Lee-Yang zeros. Experimental data are presented for Ru+Ru reactions at 1.69A GeV measured with the FOPI detector ...at SIS/GSI. The results obtained with several methods, based on the event-plane reconstruction, on Lee-Yang zeros, and on multiparticle cumulants (up to fifth order) applied for the first time at SIS energies, are compared. They show conclusive evidence that azimuthal correlations between nucleons and composite particles at this energy are largely dominated by anisotropic flow.
Small-angle correlations of pairs of protons emitted in central collisions of Ca + Ca, Ru + Ru and Au + Au at beam energies from 400 to 1500 MeV per nucleon are investigated with the FOPI detector ...system at SIS/GSI Darmstadt. Dependences on system size and beam energy are presented which extend the experimental data basis of pp correlations in the SIS energy range substantially. The size of the proton-emitting source is estimated by comparing the experimental data with the output of a final-state interaction model which utilizes either static Gaussian sources or the one-body phase-space distribution of protons provided by the BUU transport approach. The trends in the experimental data, i.e. system-size and beam energy dependences, are well reproduced by this hybrid model. However, the pp correlation function is found rather insensitive to the stiffness of the equation of state entering the transport model calculations.
Cluster production is investigated in central collisions of Ca+Ca, Ni+Ni, 96Zr+96Zr, 96Ru+96Ru, Xe+CsI and Au+Au reactions at 0.4 AGeV incident energy. We find that the multiplicity of clusters with ...charge Z⩾3 grows quadratically with the system's total charge and is associated with a midrapidity source with increasing transverse velocity fluctuations. When reduced to the same number of available charges, an increase of cluster production by about a factor of 5.5 is observed in the midrapidity region between the lightest system (Ca+Ca) and the heaviest one (Au+Au). The results, as well as simulations using quantum molecular dynamics, suggest a collision process where droplets, i.e., nucleon clusters, are created in an expanding, gradually cooling, nucleon gas. Within this picture, expansion dynamics, collective radial flow and cluster formation are closely linked as a result of the combined action of nucleon–nucleon scatterings and the mean fields.
The time dependent Schrödinger equation for two identical and charged pions is solved using wavepacket states. It is shown that the expected Coulomb distortion in the momentum correlation function is ...obliterated by the dispersion of the localized states, and therefore becomes unobservable.