Nuclear shadowing effect in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Two complementary approaches are used in studying the nuclear shadowing effect in heavy-ion collisions at SIS/GSI beam energies within a hadronic transport model. By analysing simultaneously the average transverse momentum of nucleons and pions in the reaction plane as a function of rapidity, the shadowing effect is revealed as an anticorrelation of the average transverse momentum distributions of nucleons and pions in semicentral and peripheral collisions. While by studying the azimuthal angle distribution of pions with respect to the reaction plane, the shadowing effect appears as an azimuthal anisotropy with a preferential emission of pions perpendicular to the reaction plane. The dependence of the nuclear shadowing effect on the impact parameter and the beam energy is also studied.