Excitation Functions of Stopping Power and Flow in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

Using a relativistic transport (ART) model, we study the stopping power, the formation of superdense hadronic matter as well as the strength of transverse and radial flow in central Au+Au collisions at beam momentum from 2 to 12 GeV/c per nucleon. We find that complete stopping is achieved in the whole beam momentum range. In particular, the proton rapidity distribution scaled by the beam rapidity is independent of the beam momentum, and this is in agreement with the experimental findings. Also, a large volume of superdense hadronic matter with a local energy density exceeding that expected for the transition of a hadronic matter to the quark-gluon plasma is formed in collisions at beam momenta greater than 8 GeV/c per nucleon. Furthermore, it is found that the transverse flow in these collisions is sensitive to the nuclear equation of state and decreases with increasing beam momentum. On the other hand, the radial flow is insensitive to the equation of state, and its strength increases with beam momentum.