Code comparison of transport simulations of heavy ion collisions at low and intermediate energies

Transport simulations are an important and successful tool to extract information on the equation of state of nuclear matter away from saturation conditions from heavy ion collisions. However, at times, such calculations with seemingly similar physical input have yielded different conclusions. Therefore it is deemed important to compare transport simulations under controlled conditions, which is the objective of the Transport Simulation Code Comparison project, on which we report here. We obtain for the first time a quantitative systematic error of transport simulations. We discuss possible reasons for these deviations and further comparisons to improve the situation.