Optimal collision energy for realizing macroscopic high baryon-density matter

Abstract

We investigate the volume and lifetime of the high baryon-density matter created in heavy-ion collisions and estimate the optimal collision energy to realize the high baryon-density region over a large spacetime volume. We simulate central collisions of gold ions for the center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.4 - 19.6\;{\rm GeV}$ with a microscopic transport model JAM. We discover that the optimal collision energy is around $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=3 - 4\;{\rm GeV}$, where a baryon density exceeding three times the normal nuclear density is realized with a substantially large spacetime volume. Higher and lower energies are disfavored due to short lifetime and low density, respectively. We also point out that event-by-event fluctuations of the spacetime density profile are large, indicating the importance of the event selection in the experimental analysis.