Relativistic heavy ion collisions with realistic non-equilibrium mean fields

Abstract

We study the influence of non-equilibrium phase space effects on the dynamics of heavy ion reactions within the relativistic BUU approach. We use realistic Dirac-Brueckner-Hartree-Fock (DBHF) mean fields determined for two-Fermi-ellipsoid configurations, i.e. for colliding nuclear matter, in a local phase space configuration approximation (LCA). We compare to DBHF mean fields in the local density approximation (LDA) and to the non-linear Walecka model. The results are further compared to flow data of the reaction $Au$ on $Au$ at 400 MeV per nucleon measured by the FOPI collaboration. We find that the DBHF fields reproduce the experiment if the configuration dependence is taken into account. This has also implications on the determination of the equation of state from heavy ion collisions.