1307.7654 (Jun Hong et al.)

Subthreshold pion production within a transport description of central
Au+Au collisions    [PDF]

Jun Hong, P. Danielewicz

Understanding the equation of state (EOS) of nuclear matter is a long standing problem in nuclear physics. The recent emphasis is onto the density dependence of the symmetry energy with experiments needing dedicated symmetry-energy observables. Towards the latter goal, we employed pBUU transport model to simulate pion production in heavy ion collision (HIC). We find that the net pion yield can be used to constrain the momentum dependence of nuclear mean field (MF). In studying the sensitivity of observables to symmetry energy at higher than normal densities, our calculation on pion ratio contradicts predictions from both IBUU and ImIQMD models. We propose another ratio observable for future experiments, which may serve to distinguish between different variants of symmetry energies.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.7654