Heavy-ion collisions as probes of nuclear structure
Nicolas Fortier, Sangyong Jeon, Charles Gale
Abstract
In this work, we perform a model-to-data comparison for $\text{U}+\text{U}$ and $\text{Au}+\text{Au}$ collisions performed at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at $\sqrt{{s}_{\mathrm{NN}}}=193\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\mathrm{GeV}$ and $200\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\mathrm{GeV}$ using a multistage framework. Model calculations for various configurations of $^{238}\mathrm{U}$ and $^{197}\mathrm{Au}$ are used to compare with measurements of $\ensuremath{\rho}({v}_{n}{{2}}^{2},\ensuremath{\langle}{p}_{T}\ensuremath{\rangle})$, the elliptic-flow-momentum correlator. It is found that momentum-flow correlations measured in high-energy nuclear collisions, combined with the flow harmonics themselves, are excellent probes of nuclear deformation and of nuclear structure in general.