Impact of the pre-equilibrium phase for the determination of nuclear geometry in high-energy isobar collisions

Abstract: Ultrarelativistic isobar collisions have been proposed as a useful tool to investigate nuclear structure. These systems are not created in equilibrium, rather undergo a pre-thermalization stage. In this stage, some of the initial structure information may be lost and additional effects introduced. The objective of this paper is to study this possibility in the extreme case of a "free-streaming" pre-equilibrium stage. We do this by computing estimators for ratios of various measured (or measurable) quantities (elliptic and triangular flows, mean transverse momentum and associated cumulants, correlators between elliptic or triangular flows and mean transverse momentum, symmetric cumulant and two-plane correlator) and study their sensitivity to the duration of the free-streaming stage. We find that the correlators between elliptic or triangular flows and mean transverse momentum, the so-called $\rho_2$ and $\rho_3$, are indeed sensitive to the duration of the free-streaming stage and that the normalized symmetric cumulant, $\varepsilon NSC(2,3)$ might also depend on this duration.