From Stopping to Viscosity in Nuclear Reactions

TL;DR

This paper analyzes nuclear stopping in heavy-ion collisions using transport theory to infer nuclear shear viscosity, revealing higher viscosity values than those estimated from free nucleon data.

Contribution

It introduces a method to extract nuclear shear viscosity from collision data, highlighting the impact of in-medium effects on viscosity estimates.

Findings

Viscosity values are significantly larger than free nucleon estimates.

Transport theory based on the Boltzmann equation effectively describes stopping.

In-medium effects increase the inferred shear viscosity.

Abstract

Data on stopping in intermediate-energy central heavy-ion collisions are analyzed following transport theory based on the Boltzmann equation. In consequence, values of nuclear shear viscosity are inferred. The inferred values are significantly larger than obtained for free nucleon dispersion relations and free nucleon-nucleon cross sections.