Impact of nuclear structure on longitudinal flow decorrelations in high-energy isobar collisions

Abstract

Fluctuations of harmonic flow along pseudorapidity, known as flow decorrelations, are an important probe of the initial state geometry of the quark-gluon plasma. The flow decorrelations are shown to be sensitive to the collective structure of the colliding nuclei, as revealed clearly by comparing 96Ru+96Ru collisions and 96Zr+96Zr collisions, which have different nuclear structures. The flow decorrelations in central collisions are mostly sensitive to nuclear deformations, while those in the mid-central collisions are primarily sensitive to differences in skin thickness between 96Ru and 96Zr. Longitudinal flow decorrelations in heavy-ion collisions are a new tool to probe the structure of colliding nuclei.