arXiv subjects

Hao-jie Xu

Publications and source records attributed to Hao-jie Xu.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Determine the neutron skin type by relativistic isobaric collisions

The effects of neutron skin on the multiplicity ($N_{\rm ch}$) and eccentricity($ε_2$) in relativistic $^{96}_{44}$Ru+$^{96}_{44}$Ru and $^{96}_{40}$Zr+$^{96}_{40}$Zr collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{\rm NN}}}=200$ GeV are investigated with the Trento model. It is found that the Ru+Ru/Zr+Zr ratios of the $N_{\rm ch}$ distributions and $ε_{2}$ in mid-central collisions are exquisitely sensitive to the neutron skin type (skin vs.~halo). The state-of-the-art calculations by energy density functional theory (DFT) favor the halo-type neutron skin and can soon be confronted by experimental data. It is demonstrated that the halo-type density can serve as a good surrogate for the DFT density, and thus can be efficiently employed to probe nuclear deformities by using elliptic flow data in central collisions. We provide hereby a proof-of-principle venue to simultaneously determine the neutron skin type, thickness, and nuclear deformity.

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arXiv2021

Two- and three-particle nonflow contributions to the chiral magnetic effect measurement by spectator and participant planes in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Correlation measurements with respect to the spectator and participant planes in relativistic heavy ion collisions were proposed to extract the chiral magnetic effect (CME) from background dominated azimuthal correlators. This paper investigates the effects of two- and three-particle nonflow correlations on the extracted CME signal fraction, $f_{\text{CME}}$. It is found, guided by a multiphase transport (AMPT) model and the heavy ion jet interaction generator (HIJING) together with experimental data, that the nonflow effects amount to approximately $(4\pm5)$% and $(-5\pm3)$% without and with pseudorapidity gaps, respectively, in 20-50% centrality Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\text{NN}}}= 200 \text{ GeV}$.

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arXiv2021

Decipher the $R_{Ψ_{m}}$ correlator in search for the chiral magnetic effect in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Background: The chiral magnetic effect (CME) is extensively studied in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC. An azimuthal correlator called $R_{Ψ_{m}}$ was proposed to measure the CME. By observing the same $R_{Ψ_{2}}$ and $R_{Ψ_{3}}$ (convex) distributions from A Multi-Phase Transport (AMPT) model, by contrasting data and model as well as large and small systems and by event shape engineering (ESE), a recent preprint (arXiv:2006.04251v1) from STAR suggests that the $R_{Ψ_{m}}$ observable is sensitive to the CME signal and relatively insensitive to backgrounds, and their Au+Au data are inconsistent with known background contributions. Purpose: We examine those claims by studying the robustness of the $R_{Ψ_{m}}$ observable using AMPT as well as toy model simulations. We compare $R_{Ψ_{m}}$ to the more widely used $Δγ$ azimuthal correlator to identify their commonalities and differences. Methods: We use AMPT to simulate Au+Au, p+Au, and d+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 \text{ GeV}$, and study the responses of $R_{Ψ_{m}}$ to anisotropic flow backgrounds in the model. We also use a toy model to simulate resonance flow background and input CME signal to investigate their effects in $R_{Ψ_{2}}$. Additionally we use the toy model to perform an ESE analysis to compare to STAR data as well as predict the degree of sensitivity of $R_{Ψ_{2}}$ to isobar collisions with the event statistics taken at RHIC. ...

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arXiv2020

Probing the neutron skin with ultrarelativistic isobaric collisions

Particle production in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions depends on the details of the nucleon density distributions in the colliding nuclei. We demonstrate that the charged hadron multiplicity distributions in isobaric collisions at ultrarelativistic energies provide a novel approach to determine the poorly known neutron density distributions and thus the neutron skin thickness in finite nuclei, which can in turn put stringent constraints on the nuclear symmetry energy.

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arXiv2020

Importance of non-flow background on the chiral magnetic wave search

An observable sensitive to the chiral magnetic wave (CMW) is the charge asymmetry dependence of the $π^{-}$ and $π^{+}$ anisotropic flow difference, $Δv_{n}(A_{\rm ch})$. We show that, due to non-flow correlations, the flow measurements by the Q-cumulant method using all charged particles as reference introduce a trivial linear term to $Δv_{n}(A_{\rm ch})$. The trivial slope contribution to the triangle flow difference $Δv_{3}(A_{\rm ch})$ can be negative if the non-flow is dominated by back-to-back pairs. This can explain the observed negative $Δv_{3}(A_{\rm ch})$ slope in the preliminary STAR data. We further find that the non-flow correlations give rise to additional backgrounds to the slope of $Δv_{2}(A_{\rm ch})$ from the competition among different pion sources and from the larger multiplicity dilution to $π^{+}$ ($π^{-}$) at positive (negative) $A_{\rm ch}$.

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arXiv2019

Complications in the interpretation of the charge asymmetry dependent $π$ flow for the chiral magnetic wave

The charge asymmetry ($A_{\rm ch}$) dependence of the $π^{-}$ and $π^{+}$ elliptic flow difference, $Δv_{2}(A_{\rm ch})$, has been regarded as a sensitive observable for the possible chiral magnetic wave (CMW) in relativistic heavy ion collisions. In this work, we first demonstrate that, due to non-flow backgrounds, the flow measurements by the Q-cumulant method using all charged particles as reference introduce a trivial linear term to $Δv_{2}(A_{\rm ch})$. The trivial slope can be negative in the triangle flow difference $Δv_{3}(A_{\rm ch})$ if the non-flow is dominated by back-to-back pairs. After eliminating the trivial term, we find that the non-flow between like-sign pairs gives rise to an additional positive slope to $Δv_{2}(A_{\rm ch})$ because of the larger dilution effect to $π^{+}$ ($π^{-}$) at positive (negative) $A_{\rm ch}$. We further find that the competition between different $π$ sources can introduce another non-trivial linear-$A_{\rm ch}$ term due to their different multiplicity fluctuations and anisotropic flows. We then study the effect of neutral cluster (resonance) decays as a mechanism for local charge conservation on the slope parameter of $Δv_{2}(A_{\rm ch})$. We find that the slope parameter is sensitive to the kinematics of those neutral clusters. Light resonances give positive slopes while heavy resonances give negative slopes. Local charge conservation from continuum cluster mass distribution can give a positive slope parameter comparable to experimental data. Our studies indicate that many non-CMW physics mechanisms can give rise to a $A_{\rm ch}$-dependent $Δv_{2}(A_{\rm ch})$ and the interpretation of $Δv_{2}(A_{\rm ch})$ in terms of the CMW is delicate.

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arXiv2019

Multi-phase transport model predictions of isobaric collisions with nuclear structures from density functional theory

Isobaric $^{96}_{44}$Ru+$^{96}_{44}$Ru and $^{96}_{40}$Zr+$^{96}_{40}$Zr collisions were performed at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in 2018. Using the "a multi-phase transport" model with nuclear structures calculated by the density functional theory (DFT), we make predictions for the charged hadron multiplicity distributions and elliptic azimuthal anisotropies in these collisions. Emphases are put on the relative differences between the two collision systems that can decisively discriminate DFT nuclear distributions from the commonly used Woods-Saxon densities.

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arXiv2018

The cumulants of the baryon number from central Au+Au collision at $E_{lab}$= 1.23 GeV$/$nucleon reveal the nuclear mean-field potentials

Fluctuations of the baryon number in relativistic heavy-ion collisions are a promising observable to explore the structure of the QCD phase diagram. The cumulant ratios in heavy ion collisions at intermediate energies ($\sqrt{s_{\textrm{NN}}} < 7$ GeV) have not been studied to date. We investigate the effects of mean field potential and clustering on the cumulant ratios of baryon and proton number distributions in Au+Au collisions at beam energy of 1.23 GeV$/$nucleon as measured by the HADES Collaboration at GSI. Ultrarelativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) and the JAM model are used to calculate the cumulants with different mean field potentials. It is found that the cumulant ratios are strongly time dependent. At the early stage, the effects of the potentials on the fluctuations of the particle multiplicity in momentum space are relatively weak. The mean fields enhance the fluctuations during the expansion stage, especially for small rapidity acceptance windows. The enhancement of cumulant ratios for free protons is strongly suppressed as compared to that for all baryons. The mean field potentials and the clustering play an important role for the measured cumulant ratios at intermediate energy.

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arXiv2018

Importance of isobar density distributions on the chiral magnetic effect search

Under the approximate chiral symmetry restoration, quark interactions with topological gluon fields in quantum chromodynamics can induce chirality imbalance and parity violation in local domains. An electric charge separation ({\sc cs}) could be generated along the direction of a strong magnetic field ({\bf B}), a phenomenon called the chiral magnetic effect ({\sc cme}). {\sc cs} measurements by azimuthal correlators are contaminated by a major background from elliptic flow anisotropy ($v_2$). Isobaric $^{96}_{44}$Ru+$^{96}_{44}$Ru and $^{96}_{40}$Zr+$^{96}_{40}$Zr collisions have been proposed to identify the {\sc cme} (expected to differ between the two systems) out of the background (expected to be almost the same). We show, by using the density-functional calculated proton and neutron distributions, that these expectations may not hold as originally anticipated, because the two systems may have sizable differences in eccentricity and $v_2$ and because their difference in {\bf B} may suffer from large uncertainties.

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arXiv2018

Re-examining the premise of isobaric collisions and a novel method to measure the chiral magnetic effect

In this proceeding we will show that the expectations of the isobaric $^{96}_{44}\mathrm{Ru}+^{96}_{44}\mathrm{Ru}$ and $^{96}_{40}\mathrm{Zr}+^{96}_{40}\mathrm{Zr}$ collisions on chiral magnetic effect (CME) search may not hold as originally anticipated due to large uncertainties in the isobaric nuclear structures. We demonstrate this using Woods-Saxon densities and the proton and neutron densities calculated by the density functional theory. Furthermore, a novel method is proposed to gauge background and possible CME contributions in the same system, intrinsically better than the isobaric collisions of two different systems. We illustrate the method with Monte Carlo Glauber and AMPT (A Multi-Phase Transport) simulations.

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arXiv2018

Varying the chiral magnetic effect relative to flow in a single nucleus-nucleus collision

We propose a novel method to search for the chiral magnetic effect (CME) in heavy ion collisions. We argue that the relative strength of the magnetic field (mainly from spectator protons and responsible for the CME) with respect to the reaction plane and the participant plane is opposite to that of the elliptic flow background arising from the fluctuating participant geometry. This opposite behavior in a single collision system, hence with small systematic uncertainties, can be exploited to extract the possible CME signal from the flow background. The method is applied to the existing data at RHIC, the outcome of which is discussed.

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arXiv2018

Hydrodynamic Collectivity in Proton--Proton Collisions at 13 TeV

In this paper, we investigate the hydrodynamic collectivity in proton--proton (pp) collisions at 13 TeV, using iEBE-VISHNU hybrid model with HIJING initial conditions. With properly tuned parameters, our model simulations can remarkably describe all the measured 2-particle correlations, including integrated and differential elliptic flow coefficients for all charged and identified hadrons ($K_S^0$, $Λ$). However, our model calculations show positive 4-particle cumulant $c_{2}\{4\}$ in high multiplicity pp collisions, and can not reproduce the negative $c_{2}\{4\}$ measured in experiment. Further investigations on the HIJING initial conditions show that the fluctuations of the second order anisotropy coefficient $\varepsilon_{2}$ increases with the increase of its mean value, which leads to a similar trend of the flow fluctuations. For a simultaneous description of the 2- and 4- particle cumulants within the hydrodynamic framework, it is required to have significant improvements on initial condition for pp collisions, which is still lacking of knowledge at the moment.

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arXiv2017

Non-critical fluctuations of (net) charges and (net) protons from iEBE-VISHNU hybrid model

In this paper, we investigate the non-critical fluctuations of (net) charges and (net) protons in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7, 39 and 200 GeV, using iEBE-VISHNU hybrid model with Poisson fluctuations added in the particle event generator between hydrodynamics and UrQMD. Various effects, such as volume fluctuations hadronic evolution and scatterings, resonance decays, as well as realistic centrality cuts and acceptance cuts have been embedded in our model calculations. With properly tuned parameters, iEBE-VISHNU roughly describe the centrality dependent moments and cumulants of (net) charges and (net) protons measured in experiment. Further comparison simulations show that the volume fluctuation is the dominant factor to influence the multiplicity fluctuations, which makes the higher moments of (net) charges largely deviate from the Poison baselines. We also find that the effects from hadronic evolutions and resonance decays are pretty small or even negligible for the multiplicity fluctuations of both (net) charges and (net) protons.

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arXiv2017

Collective flow in 2.76 A TeV and 5.02 A TeV Pb+Pb collisions

In this paper, we study and predict flow observables in 2.76 A TeV and 5.02 A TeV Pb +Pb collisions, using the iEBE-VISHNU hybrid model with TRENto and AMPT initial conditions and with different forms of the QGP transport coefficients. With properly chosen and tuned parameter sets, our model calculations can nicely describe various flow observables in 2.76 A TeV Pb +Pb collisions, as well as the measured flow harmonics of all charged hadrons in 5.02 A TeV Pb +Pb collisions. We also predict other flow observables, including $v_n(p_T)$ of identified particles, event-by-event $v_n$ distributions, event-plane correlations, (Normalized) Symmetric Cumulants, non-linear response coefficients and $p_T$-dependent factorization ratios, in 5.02 A TeV Pb+Pb collisions. We find many of these observables remain approximately the same values as the ones in 2.76 A TeV Pb+Pb collisions. Our theoretical studies and predictions could shed light to the experimental investigations in the near future.

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arXiv2016

Effects of volume corrections and resonance decays on cumulants of net-charge distributions in a Monte Carlo hadron resonance gas model

The effects of volume corrections and resonance decays (the resulting correlations between positive charges and negative charges) on cumulants of net-proton distributions and net-charge distributions are investigated by using a Monte Carlo hadron resonance gas ({\tt MCHRG}) model. The required volume distributions are generated by a Monte Carlo Glauber ({\tt MC-Glb}) model. Except the variances of net-charge distributions, the {\tt MCHRG} model with more realistic simulations of volume corrections, resonance decays and acceptance cuts can reasonably explain the data of cumulants of net-proton distributions and net-charge distributions reported by the STAR collaboration. The {\tt MCHRG} calculations indicate that both the volume corrections and resonance decays make the cumulant products of net-charge distributions deviate from the Skellam expectations: the deviations of $Sσ$ and $κσ^{2}$ are dominated by the former effect while the deviations of $ω$ are dominated by the latter one.

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arXiv2016

Cumulants of multiplicity distributions in most-central heavy-ion collisions

I investigate the volume corrections on cumulants of total charge distributions and net proton distributions. The required volume information is generated by an optical Glauber model. I find that the corrected statistical expectations of multiplicity distributions mimic the negative binomial distributions at non-central collisions, and they tend to approach the Poisson ones at most-central collisions due to the "boundary effects," which suppress the volume corrections. However, net proton distributions and reference multiplicity distributions are sensitive to the external volume fluctuations at most-central collisions, which imply that one has to consider the details of volume distributions in event-by-event multiplicity fluctuation studies.

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arXiv2016

Importance of volume corrections on the net-charge distributions at the RHIC BES energies

The paper presents my recent investigations of volume corrections on the cumulant products of net-charge distributions in statistical model, corresponding to the data reported by the STAR collaboration. The corrected statistical expectations, under simple Poisson approximations, can reasonably explain the data measured in experiment. The results indicate that volume corrections play crucial role in event-by-event multiplicity fluctuation studies.

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arXiv2016

Understanding the negative binomial multiplicity fluctuations in relativistic heavy ion collisions

By deriving a general expression for multiplicity distribution (a conditional probability distribution) in statistical model, we demonstrate the mismatches between experimental measurements and previous theoretical calculations on multiplicity fluctuations. From the corrected formula, we develop an improved baseline measure for multiplicity distribution under Poisson approximation in statistical model to replace the traditional Poisson expectations. We find that the ratio of the mean multiplicity to the corresponding reference multiplicity are crucial to systemically explaining the measured scale variances of total charge distributions in different experiments, as well as understanding the centrality resolution effect observed in experiment. The improved statistical expectations, albeit simple, work well in describing the negative binomial multiplicity distribution measured in experiments, e.g. the cumulants (cumulant products) of total (net) electric charge distributions.

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