Elliptic Flow and the Nuclear Equation of State

Understand

New constraints for the nuclear equation of state at suprasaturation densities have been obtained by measuring collective particle flows in heavy-ion reactions at relativistic energies.

• Ratios and differences of neutron and hydrogen flows in 197Au + 197Au collisions at 400 MeV/nucleon were used in studies of the asymmetric-matter equation of state.
• The comparison with predictions of transport models favors a moderately soft to linear density dependence, consistent with ab-initio nuclear matter theories.
• Model predictions suggest that comprehensive data sets collected at higher bombarding energies will provide information on the asymmetric-matter equation of state in the density range up to two or three times the saturation value.