Momentum dependent flow correlations in deformed nuclei at collision energies available at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

TL;DR

This study investigates how nuclear deformation influences momentum-dependent flow correlations in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions, using simulations of U+U and isobar systems to reveal their sensitivity to nuclear structure effects.

Contribution

It demonstrates that momentum-dependent flow correlation coefficients are sensitive probes of nuclear deformation effects in heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Correlation coefficients are sensitive to nuclear deformation.

Deformation effects are distinguishable in U+U and isobar collisions.

Momentum-dependent correlations effectively probe flow fluctuations.

Abstract

Flow fluctuations in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collision can be probed by studying the momentum dependent correlations or the factorization-breaking coefficients between flow harmonics in separate kinematic bins (transverse momentum or pseudorapidity). We study such factorization-breaking coefficients for collisions of deformed U+U nuclei to see the effect of the nuclear deformation on momentum dependent coefficients. We also study momentum dependent mixed-flow correlations for the isobar collision system : Ru+Ru and Zr+Zr, which have the same mass number but different nuclear structure, thus providing the ideal scenario to study nuclear deformation effect on such observables. We use the TRENTO + MUSIC model for simulations and event-by-event analysis of those observables. We find that these momentum dependent correlation coefficients are not only excellent candidates to probe the fluctuation in heavy-ion collision, but also show significant sensitivity to the nuclear deformation.