Model Study of the Energy Dependence of Anisotropic Flow in Heavy-Ion Collisions at sNN = 2–4.5 GeV

The anisotropic flow is one of the important observables sensitive to the equation of state (EOS) and transport properties of the strongly interacting matter created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. In this work, we report a detailed multi-differential study of the directed (v1), elliptic (v2), triangular (v3), and quadrangular (v4) flow coefficients of protons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at sNN = 2.2–4.5 GeV using several hadronic transport models. Recent published results for Au + Au collisions at sNN = 2.4 GeV from HADES experiment and at sNN = 3.0 GeV from the STAR experiment have been used for comparison. The study motivates further experimental investigations of the anisotropic collective flow of protons and neutrons in a high baryon density region.