Exploring nuclear structure with multiparticle azimuthal correlations at the LHC
arXiv:2409.04343 · doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139855
Abstract
Details of the nuclear structure of Xe, such as the quadrupole deformation and the nuclear diffuseness, are studied by extensive measurements of anisotropic-flow-related observables in Xe--Xe collisions at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair TeV with the ALICE detector at the LHC. The results are compared with those from Pb--Pb collisions at TeV for a baseline, given that the Pb nucleus exhibits a very weak deformation. Furthermore, comprehensive comparisons are performed with a state-of-the-art hybrid model using IP-Glasma+MUSIC+UrQMD. It is found that among various IP-Glasma+MUSIC+UrQMD calculations with different values of nuclear parameters, the one using a nuclear diffuseness parameter of and a nuclear quadrupole deformation parameter of provides a better description of the presented flow measurements. These studies represent the first systematic exploration of nuclear structure at TeV energies, utilizing a comprehensive set of anisotropic flow observables. The measurements serve as a critical experimental benchmark for rigorously testing the interplay between nuclear structure inputs and heavy-ion theoretical models.
29 pages, 7 captioned figures, authors from page 23, figures at http://alice-publications.web.cern.ch/node/11265