Investigating the possibility of extracting neutron-skin thickness in nuclei by their collisions at intermediate energies

Abstract

Inspired by various studies on extracting the density distributions of nuclei from their collisions at ultrarelativistic energies, in the present work we investigate the possibility of extracting the neutron-skin thickness $\Delta r_{np}$ in nuclei by their collisions at intermediate energies. We have analyzed the free neutron-to-proton yield ratio $n/p$ as a candidate probe at both midrapidities and forward rapidities in peripheral and central $^{124}$Sn+$^{124}$Sn collisions based on an isospin-dependent Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (IBUU) transport model, and found that the resulting $n/p$ yield ratio is more sensitive to the symmetry potential in the collision dynamics than to the initial $\Delta r_{np}$ in colliding nuclei in most cases. The largest effect on the $n/p$ yield ratio from the initial $\Delta r_{np}$ is observed for nucleons at large transverse or longitudinal momenta in central collisions at the collision energy of a few GeV/nucleon.