Methods for systematic study of nuclear structure in high-energy collisions

There is increasing interest in using high-energy collisions to probe the structure of nuclei, in particular with the high-precision data made possible by collisions performed with pairs of isobaric species. A systematic study requires a variation of parameters representing nuclear properties such as radius, skin thickness, angular deformation, and short-range correlations, to determine the sensitivity of the various observables on each of these properties. In this work we propose a method for efficiently carrying out such study, based on the shifting of positions of nucleons in Monte-Carlo samples. We show that by using this method, statistical demands can be dramatically reduced - potentially reducing the required number of simulated events by orders of magnitude - paving the way for systematic study of nuclear structure in high-energy collisions.

Automated summary

There is increasing interest in using high-energy collisions to probe the structure of nuclei. This study proposes a method for efficiently carrying out systematic studies of nuclear structure in high-energy collisions by varying parameters representing nuclear properties and using the shifting of positions of nucleons in Monte-Carlo samples. It shows that this method can dramatically reduce statistical demands, potentially reducing the required number of simulated events by orders of magnitude.