Triple nuclear collisions – a new method to explore the matter properties under new extreme conditions

¹ Institute for Nuclear Research, NAS of Ukraine, Prospekt Nauki av. 47, 03680 Kyiv, Ukraine
² Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, NAS of Ukraine, Metrologichna str. 14-B, 03680 Kyiv, Ukraine
³ Department of Physics, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, 03022 Kyiv, Ukraine
⁴ National Research Nuclear University (MEPhI), Kashirskoe Shosse 31, 115409 Moscow, Russia
⁵ Institute for Nuclear Research, Russian Academy of Science, 108840 Moscow, Russia
⁶ ITP, Goethe University, Max-von-Laue-Str. 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
⁷ University of Oslo, POB 1048 Blindern, N-0316 Oslo, Norway
⁸ Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow State University, 119899 Moscow, Russia

Published online: 1 February 2022

Abstract

We suggest to explore an entirely new method to experimentally and theoretically study the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter based on the triple nuclear collisions (TNC).We simulated the TNC using the UrQMD 3.4 model at the beam center of- mass collision energies √S_NN = 200 GeV and √S_NN = 2.76 TeV. It is found that in the most central and simultaneous TNC the initial baryonic charge density is about 3 times higher than the one achieved in the usual binary nuclear collisions at the same energies. As a consequence, the production of protons and Λ-hyperons is increased by a factor of 2 and 1.5, respectively. Using the MIT Bag model equation we study the evolution of the central cell in TNC and demonstrate that for the top RHIC energy of collision the baryonic chemical potential is 2-2.5 times larger than the one achieved in the binary nuclear collision at the same time of reaction. Based on these estimates, we show that TNC offers an entirely new possibility to study the QCD phase diagram at very high baryonic charge densities.