The RHIC isobar experiment introduced a well-controlled running mode leading to a new discovery tool for nuclear physics with unprecedented precision. Since the isobar nuclei have the same mass number, deviation of ratios of any observables from unity will flag a non-trivial physics origin. Recent measurements from collisions of 96/44Ru and 96/40Zr nuclei indeed reveal significant deviation of ratios of several bulk observables from unity, such as v2, v3, mean transverse momentum, and multiplicity.
These precision data can generate substantial impacts on constraining the structure of nuclei and their event-by-event shape fluctuations as the initial state of heavy-ion collision systems. Analyses of additional observables, including flow fluctuations and correlations, identified particle spectra and anisotropy, HBT radii, electromagnetic (EM) probes, and jet production are ongoing. Many exciting results are expected to be released by the next Quark Matter conference in April 2022.
Given such an opportunity, we deem that a workshop gathering experts from both experiments and the theory community to discuss analysis strategies and make theoretical predictions is timely and will advance our understanding of the physics potential of the isobar dataset.
The goal of this workshop is to 1) explore and identify interesting observables and associated physics, 2) understand the required experimental precision and identify possible backgrounds, 3) call for theoretical predictions, and 4) identify interesting isobar species for possible future experiments.
The topics of the workshop focus on ratios of observables from the RHIC isobar experiment, for which we can achieve good precision, including:
Event ID: B000003934