Directed, elliptic and triangular flow of protons in Au+Au reactions at 1.23 AGeV: A theoretical analysis of the recent HADES data

Understand

Recently, the HADES experiment at GSI has provided preliminary data on the directed flow, $v_1$ elliptic flow, $v_2$ and triangular flow, $v_3$ of protons in Au+Au reactions at a beam energy of 1.23 A GeV.

• Here we present a theoretical discussion of these flow harmonics within the UrQMD transport approach.
• We show that all flow harmonics, including the triangular flow, provide a consistent picture of the expansion of the system, if potential interactions are taken into account.
• Investigating the dependence of the flow harmonics on the nuclear interaction potentials it is shown that especially $v_3$ can serve as a sensitive probe for the nuclear equation of state at such low energies.