Abstract
Most atomic nuclei are deformed with a quadrupole shape described by its overall strength and triaxiality . The deformation can be accessed in high-energy heavy ion collisions by measuring the collective flow response of the produced quark-gluon plasma to the eccentricity and the density gradient in the initial state. Using an analytical estimate and a Glauber model, I show that the variances or and skewnesses or have a simple analytical form of and , respectively. From these, I constructed several normalized skewnesses to isolate the dependence from that of and show that the correlations between a normalized skewness and a variance can constrain simultaneously and . Assuming a linear relation with elliptic flow and mean-transverse momentum of final-state particles, and , similar conclusions are also expected for the variances and skewnesses of and , i.e., for and and for or . My findings motivate a dedicated system scan of high-energy heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC to measure triaxiality of atomic nuclei: one first determines the coefficients and by collisions of isobaric near prolate nuclei, , and near oblate nuclei, , with known values, followed by collisions of other species of interest with similar mass number. The values for this species can be inferred directly from the measured variance and skewness observables from these collisions. The results demonstrate the unique opportunities offered by high-energy collisions as a tool to perform interdisciplinary nuclear physics studies.
16 More- Received 3 January 2022
- Accepted 25 March 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.105.044905
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