Abstract
In the hydrodynamic framework of heavy-ion collisions, elliptic flow is sensitive to the quadrupole deformation of the colliding ions. This enables one to test whether the established knowledge on the low-energy structure of nuclei is consistent with collider data from high-energy experiments. We derive a formula based on generic scaling laws of hydrodynamics to relate the difference in measured between collision systems that are close in size to the value of of the respective species. We validate our formula in simulations of and collisions at top Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) energy, and subsequently apply it to experimental data. Using the deformation of from low-energy experiments, we find that RHIC data implies for nuclei, i.e., significantly more deformed than reported in the literature, posing an interesting issue in nuclear phenomenology.
- Received 12 May 2021
- Revised 18 September 2021
- Accepted 15 November 2021
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.242301
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