Initial state and evolution of hot and dense medium produced in isobaric collisions at 200A GeV at RHIC

TL;DR

This study investigates how initial nuclear geometry and deformation in isobaric Ru+Ru and Zr+Zr collisions at 200A GeV influence the evolution of the quark-gluon plasma and final state observables, emphasizing photon flow sensitivity.

Contribution

It provides detailed analysis of initial state effects and nuclear deformation impacts on flow observables in isobaric collisions using hydrodynamical modeling.

Findings

Photon anisotropic flow is highly sensitive to initial geometry.

Nuclear deformation significantly affects final flow observables.

Photon measurements can better constrain initial state models.

Abstract

Isobaric collisions provide a unique opportunity to investigate how variations in the charge to mass ratio affect the final state observables produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions. Most importantly, isobaric systems that differ in their nuclear structure offer valuable insights into the underlying nuclear geometries, making them powerful tools to probe the role of nuclear structure using heavy ion collisions. We study the initial state and evolution of the hot and dense medium formed in Ru+Ru and Zr+Zr collisions at 200A GeV at RHIC using a relativistic hydrodynamical model. The initial geometry of the two isobaric collisions is found to influence the evolution of the hot and dense medium produced. The sensitivity of photon production, charged particle spectra and anisotropic flow coefficients ($v_n$) to the initial geometry, including different orientations of the isobaric set have been studied in detail. Significant variations in anisotropic flow of photons and hadrons are observed, highlighting the role of nuclear deformation in shaping final state observables. Moreover, photon anisotropic flow is found to be considerably more sensitive to the initial state than charged particle anisotropic flow, indicating that photon measurements in isobaric collisions have strong potential to constrain initial state modeling and improve our understanding of QGP properties in such systems.