Semiclassical descriptions for quantum transport of heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

This article gives a brief review on transport models for the simulations of intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions, including the Boltzmann transport models and the quantum molecular dynamics transport models. The former solve numerically the evolution of the one-body phase-space distribution function based on the Boltzmann equation, while the latter simulate the evolution of nucleons described by Gaussian wave-packets under the many-body Hamiltonian. Different treatments for the initialization, the mean-field potential, as well as the nucleon-nucleon scatterings are applied in the two type transport models. Comparing transport simulation results with the experimental data of intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions is one of the main means to extract the information of the nuclear force and the nuclear equation of state. In order to reduce the theoretical uncertainties of transport simulations, continuous efforts have been made by experts of transport models all over the world. In the past decade, simulation results from about twenty transport models are compared and evaluated in systems of heavy-ion collisions and the box with the periodic boundary condition, mainly concentrating on nucleon-nucleon collisions and the Pauli blocking, the nucleon collective flow, and the meson production, etc.