Separating the impact of nuclear skin and nuclear deformation in high-energy isobar collisions

Understand

Bulk nuclear structure properties, such as radii and deformations, leave distinct signatures in the final state of relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

• Isobaric collisions offer an easy route to establish explicit connections between the colliding nuclei's structure and the observable outcomes.
• Here, we investigate the effects of nuclear skin thickness and nuclear deformations on the elliptic flow ($v_2$) and its fluctuations in high-energy $^{96}$Ru+$^{96}$Ru and $^{96}$Zr+$^{96}$Zr collisions.
• Our findings reveal that the difference in skin thickness between these isobars only influences the inherent ellipticity of the collision systems, $v_2^{\mathrm{rp}}$.