Excitation function of elliptic flow in Au+Au collisions and the nuclear matter equation of state

We present measurements of the excitation function of elliptic flow at midrapidity in Au+Au collisions at beam energies from 0.09 to 1.49 GeV per nucleon. For the integral flow, we discuss the interplay between collective expansion and spectator shadowing for three centrality classes. A complete excitation function of transverse momentum dependence of elliptic flow is presented for the first time in this energy range, revealing a rapid change with incident energy below 0.4 AGeV, followed by an almost perfect scaling at the higher energies. The equation of state of compressed nuclear matter is addressed through comparisons to microscopic transport model calculations.Comment: 10 pages, 4 eps figures, submitted for publication. Data files will be available at http://www.gsi.de/~fopiwww/pub

An event generator for inelastic proton-nucleus interactions at intermediate energies

In this work, we seek to develop a numerically fast method of determining multiplicities and double-differential cross sections of secondaries produced in the intermediate energy inelastic interaction of protons with atomic nuclei. We accomplish this by coupling global parameterisations of the relevant quantities of interest derived from BUU simulations to the GEM2 evaporative decay model. Issues associated with the mean-field representation of the incident proton are addressed by treating the spectrum of nuclear excitation levels as an equa-probable continuum. In general, we find good agreement with the ICRU63 results for incident energies in excess of 100 MeV. Below this, it is likely that a more careful treatment of the nuclear excitation spectrum is necessary.NRC publication: Ye