High Density with Elliptic Flows

Abstract

The elliptic flow of emitted particles and fragments observed in heavy-ion reactions at high energy has become an important observable reflecting the pressure generated in the dense collision zone. More recently, the strength of the nuclear symmetry energy has been investigated by measuring the ratios or differences of the elliptic flows exhibited by neutrons and charged particles in 197Au+197Au collisions at 400 MeV/nucleon incident energy at the GSI laboratory. A moderately soft to linear dependence on density was deduced for a range of densities shown to reach beyond twice the saturation value in these experiments. The known sources of uncertainties and possible model dependencies were thoroughly studied with transport models of the UrQMD and Tuebingen QMD type. A new source of information on the nuclear equation of state at high density has opened up with the observation of the first LIGO and Virgo GW170817 gravitational wave signal from a neutron star merger. The quantitative comparison of terrestrial and celestial results on the basis of measured or inferred neutron star radii or core pressures, including those obtained from X-ray observations, reveals a rather satisfactory agreement. Depending on the precision that can be achieved with future measurements and observations, it will thus become possible to assess the validity of the applied models and methods. The perspectives for improved experiments at FAIR using the NeuLAND and KRAB detection systems are outlined.