Studies of nuclear equation of state with the HIRFL-CSR external-target experiment

TL;DR

The paper discusses the design and simulation of the HIRFL-CSR external-target experiment (CEE) aimed at studying the nuclear equation of state through heavy ion collisions at hundreds of MeV/u, demonstrating its potential to probe high-density nuclear matter.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive simulation study of the CEE detector's performance and its capability to measure key observables related to the nuclear equation of state.

Findings

Detector response simulations show high spatial and momentum resolution.

Various observables can effectively probe the nuclear equation of state.

Feasibility of studying high-density nuclear matter with CEE is demonstrated.

Abstract

The HIRFL-CSR external-target experiment (CEE) under construction is expected to provide novel opportunities to the studies of the thermodynamic properties, namely the equation of state of nuclear matter (nEOS) with heavy ion collisions at a few hundreds MeV/u beam energies. Based on Geant 4 packages, the fast simulations of the detector responses to the collision events generated using transport model are conducted. The overall performance of CEE, including spatial resolution of hits, momentum resolution of tracks and particle identification ability has been investigated. Various observables proposed to probe the nEOS, such as the production of light clusters, $\rm t/^3He$ yield ratio, the radial flow, $\pi^{-}/\pi^{+}$ yield ratio and the neutral kaon yields, have been reconstructed. The feasibility of studying nEOS beyond the saturation density via the aforementioned observables to be measured with CEE has been demonstrated.