Dense Nuclear Matter Equation of State from Heavy-Ion Collisions

Understand

The nuclear equation of state (EOS) is at the center of numerous theoretical and experimental efforts in nuclear physics.

• With advances in microscopic theories for nuclear interactions, the availability of experiments probing nuclear matter under conditions not reached before, endeavors to develop sophisticated and reliable transport simulations to interpret these experiments, and the advent of multi-messenger astronomy, the next decade will bring new opportunities for determining the nuclear matter EOS, elucidating its dependence on density, temperature, and isospin asymmetry.
• Among controlled terrestrial experiments, collisions of heavy nuclei at intermediate beam energies (from a few tens of MeV/nucleon to about 25 GeV/nucleon in the fixed-target frame) probe the widest ranges of baryon density and temperature, enabling studies of nuclear matter from a few tenths to about 5 times the nuclear saturation density and for temperatures from a few to well above a hundred MeV, respectively.
• Collisions of neutron-rich isotopes further bring the opportunity to probe effects due to the isospin asymmetry.