Elliptic flow and system size dependence of transition energies at intermediate energies

Abstract

The elliptic flow for $Z\le2$ particles in heavy ion collisions at energies from several tens to several hundreds MeV per nucleon is investigated by means of transport model,i.e. a new version of the Improved Quantum Molecular Dynamics model (ImQMD05). In this model, a complete Skyrme potential energy density functional is employed. The influence of different effective interactions and medium corrections of nucleon-nucleon cross sections on the elliptic flow are studied. Our results show that a soft nuclear equation of state and incident energy dependent in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross sections are required for describing the excitation function of the elliptic flow at intermediate energies. The size dependence of transition energies for the elliptic flow at intermediate energies is also studied. The system size dependence of transition energies fits a power of system size with a exponent of 0.223.