Cluster dynamics studied with the phase-space Minimum Spanning Tree approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a phase-space Minimum Spanning Tree method to analyze cluster formation in heavy-ion collisions, revealing how microscopic dynamics and interactions influence weakly bound object emergence.

Contribution

It presents a model-independent cluster recognition approach combining coordinate and momentum space correlations, applied across multiple transport models.

Findings

Cluster formation sensitivity to microscopic dynamics

Impact of potential interactions on cluster emergence

Application across different transport approaches

Abstract

The origin of weakly bound objects like clusters and hypernuclei, observed in heavy-ion collisions, is of theoretical and experimental interest. It is in the focus of the experiments at RHIC and LHC since it is not evident how such weakly bound objects can survive in an environment whose hadronic decay products point to a temperature of the order of 150 MeV. It is as well one of the key research topics in the future facilities of FAIR and NICA which are under construction in Darmstadt (Germany) and Dubna (Russia), respectively. We present here first results on the cluster dynamics within the model-independent cluster recognition library "phase-space Minimum Spanning Tree" (psMST) applied to different transport approaches: PHQMD, PHSD, SMASH and UrQMD. The psMST is based on the "Minimum Spanning Tree" (MST) algorithm for the cluster recognition which exploits correlations in coordinate space, and it is extended to correlations of baryons in the clusters in momentum space. We show the sensitivity of the cluster formation on the microscopic realization of the n-body dynamics and on the potential interactions in heavy-ion collisions.