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arXiv · 2208.05416

Impact of nuclear structure on longitudinal flow decorrelations in high-energy isobar collisions

Abstract

Fluctuations of harmonic flow along pseudorapidity, known as flow decorrelations, are an important probe of the initial state geometry of the quark-gluon plasma. The flow decorrelations are shown to be sensitive to the collective structure of the colliding nuclei, as revealed clearly by comparing collisions of isobars, $^{96}$Ru+$^{96}$Ru and $^{96}$Zr+$^{96}$Zr, which have different nuclear structures. The flow decorrelations in central collisions are mostly sensitive to nuclear deformations, while those in the mid-central collisions are primarily sensitive to differences in skin thickness between $^{96}$Ru and $^{96}$Zr. Longitudinal flow decorrelations in heavy-ion collisions are a new tool to probe the structure of colliding nuclei.

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Maowu Nie, Chunjian Zhang, Zhenyu Chen, Li Yi, Jiangyong Jia. 2023-07-19. Impact of nuclear structure on longitudinal flow decorrelations in high-energy isobar collisions. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2023.138177

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