Testing the phase transition parameters inside neutron stars with the production of protons and lambdas in relativistic heavy-ion collisions [CL]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.04978


We demonstrate the consistency of the quark deconfinement phase transition parameters in the beta-stable neutron star matter and in the nearly symmetric nuclear matter formed in heavy-ion collisions (HICs). We investigate the proton and $\Lambda$ flow in Au+Au collisions at 3 and 4.5 GeV/nucleon incident beam energies with the pure hadron cascade version of a multi-phase transport model. The phase transition in HICs and neutron stars is described based on a class of hybrid equations of state from the quark mean-field model for the hadronic phase and a constant-speed-of-sound parametrization for the high-density quark phase. The measurements of the anisotropic proton flow at 3 GeV/nucleon by the STAR collaboration favor a relatively low phase transition density lower than $\sim 2.5$ times saturation density indicated by the gravitational wave and electromagnetic observations of neutron stars. And the proton flow data at the higher energy of 4.5 GeV/nucleon can be used to effectively constrain the softness of high-density quark matter equations of state. Finally, compared to the proton flow, the $\Lambda$ flow is found to be less sensitive and not constraining to the equations of state.

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A. Li, G. Yong and Y. Zhang
Thu, 10 Nov 22
23/78

Comments: 7 pages, 7 figures