System-size dependence of collective transverse flow in relativistic nuclear collisions

Abstract

The transverse momentum distributions of identified hadrons (π±, K±, p, p, K0S, Λ, Λ, Ξ−, Ξ+, φ, Ω−, and Ω+) produced in Au+Au collisions at RHIC-BES energies are analyzed with Blast-Wave model and with Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics. The kinetic freeze-out temperature, the average transverse flow velocity and the flow profile exponent are extracted from the transverse momentum spectra of the particles. The study of system-size dependence of the kinetic freeze-out parameters showed that kinetic freeze-out temperature increases, while average transverse flow ve- locity decreases from central to peripheral collisions. The larger freeze-out temperature for peripheral collisions may indicate an earlier decoupling of the expanding system. For the same centrality class, it is observed that the transverse flow velocity and flow profile exponent have an increasing trend with increasing collision energy.