3 years ago

# Signatures of $\alpha$ clustering in ultra-relativistic collisions with light nuclei.

Maciej Rybczyński, Wojciech Broniowski, Milena Piotrowska

We explore possible observable signatures of $\alpha$ clustering of light nuclei in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions involving ${}^{7,9}$Be, ${}^{12}$C, and ${}^{16}$O. The clustering leads to specific spatial correlations of the nucleon distributions in the ground state, which are manifest in the earliest stage of the ultra-high energy reaction. The formed initial state of the fireball is sensitive to these correlations, and the effect influences, after the collective evolution of the system, the hadron production in the final stage. Specifically, we study effects on the harmonic flow in collisions of light clustered nuclei with a heavy target (${}^{208}$Pb), showing that measures of the elliptic flow are sensitive to clusterization in ${}^{7,9}$Be, whereas triangular flow is sensitive to clusterization in ${}^{12}$C and ${}^{16}$O. Specific predictions are made for model collisions at the CERN SPS energies. In another exploratory development we also examine the proton-beryllium collisions, where the $3/2^-$ ground state of ${}^{7,9}$Be nucleus is polarized by an external magnetic field. Clusterization leads to multiplicity distributions of participant nucleons which depend on the orientation of the polarization with respect to the collision axis, as well as on the magnetic number of the state. The obtained effects on multiplicities reach a factor of a few for collisions with a large number of participant nucleons.

Publisher URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/1711.00438

DOI: arXiv:1711.00438v2

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.