Elliptic flow splitting between protons and antiprotons from hadronic potentials

The difference in elliptic flow $v_{2}$ between protons and antiprotons, produced in $^{197}\text{Au}+^{197}\text{Au}$ collisions at center-of-mass energies $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=5-12~\text{GeV}$, is studied within a modified version of the ultrarelativistic quantum molecular dynamics (UrQMD) model. Two different model scenarios are compared: the cascade mode and the mean field mode which includes potential interactions for both formed and pre-formed hadrons. The model results for the elliptic flow of protons and the relative $v_{2}$ difference between protons and antiprotons obtained from the mean field mode agree with the available experimental data, while the $v_{2}$ difference is near zero for the cascade mode. Our results show that the elliptic flow splitting, observed for particles and antiparticles, can be explained by the inclusion of proper hadronic interactions. In addition, the difference in $v_{2}$ between protons and antiprotons depends on the centrality and the rapidity window. With smaller centrality and/or rapidity acceptance, the observed elliptic flow splitting is more sensitive to the beam energy, indicating a strong net baryon density dependence of the effect. We propose to confirm this splitting at the upcoming experiments from Beam Energy Scan (BES) Phase-\Rmnum{2} at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) at Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR), High Intensity heavy ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF) and Nuclotron-based Ion Collider fAcility (NICA).