The microscopic description of heavy-ion reactions at low beam energies is achieved within hadronic transport approaches. In this article a new approach SMASH (Simulating Many Accelerated Strongly-interacting Hadrons) is introduced and applied to study the production of non-strange particles in heavy-ion reactions at E kin = 0.4 − 2A GeV. First, the model is described including details about the collision criterion, the initial conditions and the resonance formation and decays. To validate the approach, equilibrium properties such as detailed balance are presented and the results are compared to experimental data for elementary cross sections. Finally results for pion and proton production in C+C and Au+Au collisions is confronted with HADES and FOPI data. Predictions for particle production in π + A collisions are made.

Fermions become polarized in a vortical fluid due to spin-vorticity coupling. Such a polarization can be calculated from the Wigner function in a quantum kinetic approach. Extending previous results for chiral fermions, we derive the Wigner function for massive fermions up to the next-toleading order in spatial gradient expansion. The polarization density of fermions can be calculated from the axial vector component of the Wigner function and is found to be proportional to the local vorticity ω. The polarizations per particle for fermions and anti-fermions decrease with the chemical potential and increase with energy (mass). Both quantities approach the asymptotic value ω/4 in the large energy (mass) limit. The polarization per particle for fermions is always smaller than that for anti-fermions, whose ratio of fermions to anti-fermions also decreases with the chemical potential. The polarization per particle on the Cooper-Frye freeze-out hyper-surface can also be formulated and is consistent with the previous result of Becattini et al..

Hadron spectra and elliptic flow in high-energy heavy-ion collisions are studied within a (3+1)D ideal hydrodynamic model with fluctuating initial conditions given by the AMPT Monte Carlo model. Results from event-by-event simulations are compared with experimental data at both RHIC and LHC energies. Fluctuations in the initial energy density come from not only the number of coherent soft interactions of overlapping nucleons but also incoherent semi-hard parton scatterings in each binary nucleon collision. Mini-jets from semi-hard parton scatterings are assumed to be locally thermalized through a Gaussian smearing and give rise to non-vanishing initial local flow velocities. Fluctuations in the initial flow velocities lead to harder transverse momentum spectra of final hadrons due to non-vanishing initial radial flow velocities. Initial fluctuations in rapidity distributions lead to expanding hot spots in the longitudinal direction and are shown to cause a sizable reduction of final hadron elliptic flow at large transverse momenta.

Fermions become polarized in a vortical fluid due to spin-vorticity coupling. The spin polarization density is proportional to the local fluid vorticity at the next-to-leading order of a gradient expansion in a quantum kinetic theory. Spin correlations of two Λ-hyperons can therefore reveal the vortical structure of the dense matter in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. We employ a (3+1)D viscous hydrodynamic model with event-by-event fluctuating initial conditions from A MultiPhase Transport (AMPT) model to calculate the vorticity distributions and Λ spin correlations. The azimuthal correlation of the transverse spin is shown to have a cosine form plus an offset due to a circular structure of the transverse vorticity around the beam direction and global spin polarization. The longitudinal spin correlation shows a structure of vortex-pairing in the transverse plane due to the convective flow of hot spots in the radial direction. The dependence on colliding energy, rapidity, centrality and sensitivity to the shear viscosity are also investigated. Introduction. -Low-energy nuclear reactions can create rotating and deformed compound nuclei that carry a large amount of orbital angular momentum of the colliding nuclei [1]. The large orbital angular momentum in non-central high-energy heavy-ion collisions cannot produce a rotating quark-gluon plasma because of the soft equation of state (EoS). It should instead lead to fluid shear and non-vanishing local fluid vorticity [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. In such a vorticular fluid, the spin-orbital coupling polarizes the spin of fermions (quarks and baryons) [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] along the direction of the vorticity.