Simulation studies of the isovector reorientation effect of deuteron scattering on heavy target

TL;DR

This study uses simulation to demonstrate the feasibility of measuring the isovector reorientation effect in deuteron scattering on heavy targets, which can probe the nuclear symmetry energy.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed simulation framework for detecting the IVR effect using the SAMURAI setup, highlighting experimental feasibility with polarized deuteron beams.

Findings

Feasibility of detecting IVR effect at SAMURAI confirmed

Simulation shows effective event reconstruction for polarized deuterons

Proton and neutron detection strategies are validated

Abstract

The isovector reorientation (IVR) effect of deuteron scattering on heavy target provides a novel means to probe the nuclear isovector potential, which gives rise to the nuclear symmetry energy. The simulation studies on the experimental measurement of IVR effect using the SAMURAI terminal at RIKEN Nishina center have been performed to demonstrate the feasibility of the experiment. By introducing a well-designed polarimeter to detect the $\mathrm{p}(\vec{\mathrm{d}}, \mathrm{d})\mathrm{p}$ elastic scattering, monitoring of the tensor polarization of the deuteron beam can be implemented. The protons and neutrons produced by the breakup of polarized deuterons scattering off heavy targets are designed to be measured by proton drift chamber (PDC) combined with the SAMURAI magnet and NEBULA detector, respectively. The detector responses are simulated using Geant4 framework, where the events of the deuteron elastic breakup are generated by an Improved Quantum Molecular Dynamics model. The results of reconstructing the deuteron breakup events demonstrate the feasibility of detecting the IVR effect at SAMURAI with both longitudinal and transverse tensor polarized deuteron beams with a polarization degree of approximately 80\%.