Sensitivity of Flow Harmonics to the Equation of State of Strongly Interacting Matter in Heavy-Ion Collisions at Nuclotron-NICA Energies

Abstract

The main goal of beam energy scan programs in heavy-ion collisions is to investigate the equation of state (EoS) and explore possible phase transitions in strongly interacting matter. Anisotropic flow, quantified from the azimuthal distributions of produced particles, is a key observable in this context. Beyond single-harmonic measurements, correlations between different flow harmonics provide high sensitivity to the properties of the EoS and to the mechanisms of collective dynamics. In this work, we study correlations between the directed ( $${{v}_{1}}$$ ), elliptic ( $${{v}_{2}}$$ ), and triangular ( $${{v}_{3}}$$ ) flow coefficients using the modern JAM transport model with different assumptions about the nuclear EoS at Nuclotron–NICA energies relevant for the MPD experiment. The results are compared with available HADES data for validation.