Collective flows of pions in Au+Au collisions at energies 1.0 and 1.5 GeV/nucleon

TL;DR

This study uses an updated UrQMD model to analyze pion flow patterns in Au+Au collisions at 1.0 and 1.5 GeV/nucleon, comparing different pion potentials to experimental data to understand their effects.

Contribution

It introduces and compares pion potentials from the $ riangle$-hole model and phenomenological approaches within UrQMD to better describe pion flow data.

Findings

Pion flow is more sensitive to pion potential than elliptic flow.

The phenomenological pion potential is too strong to match data.

The $ riangle$-hole model provides a good description of flow data.

Abstract

Based on the newly updated version of the ultrarelativistic quantum molecular dynamics (UrQMD) model, the pion potentials obtained from the in-medium dispersion relation of the $\Delta$-hole model and from the modified phenomenological approach are further introduced. Both the rapidity $y_0$ and transverse-velocity $u_{t0}$ dependence of directed $v_1$ and elliptic $v_2$ flows of ${\pi}^{+}$ and ${\pi}^{-}$ charged mesons produced from Au+Au collisions at two beam energies of 1.0 GeV/nucleon and 1.5 GeV/nucleon and within a large centrality region of $0<b_0<0.55$ are scanned. Calculations with pion potentials as well as without considering the pion potential are compared to the newly experimental data released by the FOPI collaboration at GSI. It is found that the directed flow is more sensitive to the pion potential than the elliptic one, and the attractive pion potential from the phen.B mode of the phenomenological approach is too strong to describe the flow data and can be safely ruled out. The relatively weak pion potential from the $\Delta$-hole model can supply a good description for the FOPI data of both flows as functions of both centrality and rapidity. A two-peak/valley structure occurs in the transverse-velocity dependent directed flow but the elliptic flow drops monotonously with increasing $u_{t0}$. Finally, both $v_1$ and $v_2$ flows with large $u_{t0}$ from semi-central heavy ion collisions can be taken as sensitive probes for the pion potential.