2021 Impact factor 3.131
Hadrons and Nuclei
Eur. Phys. J. A 5, 77-84

Isospin equilibration in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

A. Hombach - W. Cassing - U. Mosel

Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Giessen, D-35392 Giessen, Germany

Received: 23 September 1998 / Revised version: 3 December 1998 Communicated by V. Metag

Abstract
We study the mixing and the kinetic equilibration of projectile and target nucleons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions in the energy regime between 150 AMeV and 2 AGeV in a coupled-channel BUU (CBUU) approach. We find that equilibrium in the projectile-target degrees of freedom is in general not reached even for large systems at low energy where elastic nucleon-nucleon collisions dominate. Inelastic nucleon excitations are more favorable for equilibration and their relative abundance increases both with energy and mass. Experimentally, the projectile/target admixture can be determined by measuring the degree of isospin equilibration in isospin asymmetric nuclear collisions. For one of the most promising systems currently under investigation, ${}^{96}_{44}{\rm Ru}+{}^{96}_{40}{\rm Zr}$, we investigate the influence of the equation of state and the inelastic in-medium cross section.

PACS
25.75.+r Relativistic heavy-ion collisions


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