Collective flow in heavy-ion collisions at E_lab = 1-2 AGeV

Collective flow represents an important opportunity to gain information about the characteristics of the fireball and insights about the equation of state. Flow can be analyzed by considering the momentum distribution of the particles which are emitted from the fireball. Collective flow is composed of radial flow and an azimuthally asymmetric expansion, the latter is corresponding to the anisotropic flow. In non-central collisions the fireball corresponds to an almond-shaped overlap area of the participants, which results in the anisotropic flow. The largest contributions to this anisotropic flow are provided by the elliptic and the directed flow. When the speed of the spectators is lower than the rate of expansion of the fireball, they block the emission of particles from the fireball. Hence the particles are squeezed out of the almond shape. In central collisions the fireball is circular resulting in a radial flow of matter. These flow-effects can be analyzed by investigating v₁ and v₂ as a function of the transverse momentum or the rapidity. In this work, the collective flow of nucleons and pions is studied within a hadronic transport approach at beam energies of 1-2 AGeV.