Hubble Expansion and Freeze-Out at RHIC-BES Energies from UrQMD
The freeze-out process in heavy ion collisions is driven by the competition between the scattering rate and the expansion rate of the matter. We analyse the expansion rate $Θ$ (often called Hubble flow) in relativistic heavy ion collisions in the FAIR and RHIC-BES energy regimes and compare it to the scattering rate $Γ$ using the UrQMD transport model. We observe that the time evolution of the system is clearly separated into a compression phase and an expansion phase with time dependent $Θ_\parallel$ and $Θ_\perp$. The calculated values of the Hubble expansion at kinetic decoupling are in line with previous simple estimates by statistical hadronization models with a Siemens-Rasmussen type emission source. However, the actual shape of the expanding matter is, as expected, found to be between a spherically symmetric and a purely longitudinal expansion. We confirm for the first time in a microscopic simulation that the decoupling hypersurface is indeed determined by the competition of the expansion rate $Θ$ and the scattering rate $Γ$ as suggested previously. This suggests that, in the range of collision energies explored in this study, simple iso-thermal/iso-energy density criteria that are often used in hybrid models to couple hydrodynamic and transport simulations may not capture the true decoupling hyper-surface.