A unified description of small, peripheral, and large system suppression data from pQCD
arXiv:2411.09647 · doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139437
Abstract
We present quantitative predictions for the nuclear modification factor in both small and peripheral systems from a pQCD-based energy loss model that is constrained by light- and heavy-flavor suppression data from central heavy-ion collisions. We find nearly identical suppression for central collisions as for peripheral collisions, quantitatively consistent with the measured 20% suppression of neutral pions produced in collisions by PHENIX, but dramatically inconsistent with the measured 20% enhancement of charged hadrons produced in collisions by ATLAS. We demonstrate that this equivalence of central small system suppression and peripheral large system suppression is insensitive to the underlying energy loss model.
6 pages (excluding references), 4 figures. Updated to be consistent with published letter in Physics Letters B