Elimination of influence of neutron-skin size difference of initial colliding nuclei in Pb+Pb collisions

Abstract

Within an isospin- and momentum-dependent transport model using as an input nucleon density profiles from Hartree-Fock calculations based on a modified Skyrme-like (MSL) model, we study how to eliminate the influence of neutron-skin size difference of initial colliding nuclei in probing the nuclear symmetry energy. Within the current experimental uncertainty range of neutron-skin size of $^{208}$Pb, the Pb+Pb collisions are performed in semicentral and peripheral collisions with impact parameters of 5 and 9fm and at beam energies from 50 MeV/nucleon to 1000 MeV/nucleon, respectively. It is shown that combination of neutron and proton collective flows, i.e., neutron-proton differential elliptic flow, neutron-proton elliptic flow difference, neutron-proton differential transverse flow and neutron-proton transverse flow difference, can effectively eliminate the effects of neutron-skin size difference and thus can be as useful sensitive observables in probing nuclear matter symmetry energy in heavy-ion collisions. Moreover, the combined neutron-proton stopping power including the neutron-proton differential stopping power and neutron-proton stopping power difference can also eliminate the effects of neutron-skin size difference and shows some sensitivities to symmetry energy especially at the lower beam energy.