Scaling of Anisotropic Flows and Nuclear Equation of State in Intermediate Energy Heavy Ion Collisions

TL;DR

This study investigates how anisotropic flows of light clusters in intermediate energy heavy ion collisions scale with nucleon number and how these flows relate to the nuclear equation of state and symmetry energy, revealing robust scaling behaviors.

Contribution

It demonstrates that flow scaling laws are independent of potential details, providing insights into the nuclear equation of state and symmetry energy effects.

Findings

Flow scaling behaviors are robust across different potential parameters.

The ratio v4/v2^2 remains constant at 1/2 for all light fragments.

Flow strength varies with the nuclear equation of state and symmetry potential.

Abstract

Elliptic flow ($v_2$) and hexadecupole flow ($v_4$) of light clusters have been studied in details for 25 MeV/nucleon $^{86}$Kr + $^{124}$Sn at large impact parameters by Quantum Molecular Dynamics model with different potential parameters. Four parameter sets which include soft or hard equation of state (EOS) with/without symmetry energy term are used. Both number-of-nucleon ($A$) scaling of the elliptic flow versus transverse momentum ($p_t$) and the scaling of $v_4/A^{2}$ versus $(p_t/A)^2$ have been demonstrated for the light clusters in all above calculation conditions. It was also found that the ratio of $v_4/{v_2}^2$ keeps a constant of 1/2 which is independent of $p_t$ for all the light fragments. By comparisons among different combinations of EOS and symmetry potential term, the results show that the above scaling behaviors are solid which do not depend the details of potential, while the strength of flows is sensitive to EOS and symmetry potential term.