Probing the nuclear equation of state with clusters and hypernuclei

The study of the nuclear equation of state (EoS) is one of the primary goals of experimental and theoretical heavy-ion physics. The comparison of recent high-statistics data from the STAR Collaboration with transport models provides a unique possibility to address this topic in a yet-unexplored energy domain. Employing the microscopic <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <a:mrow> <a:mi>N</a:mi> </a:mrow> </a:math> -body parton-hadron-quantum-molecular dynamics transport approach, which allows us to describe the propagation and interactions of hadronic and partonic degrees of freedom, including cluster and hypernucleus formation and dynamics, we investigate the influence of different EoS on bulk observables, the multiplicity, <b:math xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <b:msub> <b:mi>p</b:mi> <b:mi>T</b:mi> </b:msub> </b:math> , and rapidity distributions of protons, <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <c:mrow> <c:mi mathvariant="normal">Λ</c:mi> <c:mspace width="0.28em"/> <c:mi mathvariant="normal">s</c:mi> </c:mrow> </c:math> and clusters up to <g:math xmlns:g="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <g:mrow> <g:mi>A</g:mi> </g:mrow> </g:math> = 4, as well as their influence on the collective flow. We explore three different EoS: two static EoS, dubbed “soft” and “hard,” which differ in the compressibility modulus, as well as a soft momentum-dependent EoS. We find that a soft momentum-dependent EoS reproduces most baryon and cluster observables, including the flow observables, quantitatively; however, hard EoS show a similar trend.