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    Novel deep learning method for detecting nucleon-nucleon correlations

    Yu-Jing Huang, Zhu Meng, Long-Gang Pang*, and Xin-Nian Wang†

    • *Contact author: lgpang@ccnu.edu.cn
    • †Contact author: xnwang@ccnu.edu.cn

    Phys. Rev. C 113, 034916 – Published 23 March, 2026

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/hymw-tknk

    Abstract

    This study investigates the impact of nucleon-nucleon correlations on heavy-ion collisions using the hadronic transport model smash in sNN=3 GeV Au197+Au197 collisions. We developed an innovative Monte Carlo sampling method that incorporates both single-nucleon distributions and nucleon-nucleon correlations. By comparing three initial nuclear configurations—a standard Woods-Saxon distribution (un-corr), hard-sphere repulsion (step corr), and ab initio nucleon-nucleon correlations (nn-corr)—we revealed minimal differences in traditional observables except for ultracentral collisions. When distinguishing between un-corr and nn-corr configurations, conventional attention-based point-cloud networks and multievent mixing classifiers failed (accuracy 50%). To resolve this, we developed a novel deep learning architecture integrating multievent statistics and high-dimensional latent space feature correlations, achieving 60% overall classification accuracy, which improved to 70% for central collisions. This method enables the extraction of subtle nuclear structure signals through statistical analysis in high-dimensional latent space, offering a new paradigm for studying initial-state nuclear properties and quark-gluon plasma characteristics in heavy-ion collisions. It overcomes the limitations of traditional single-event analysis in detecting subtle initial-state differences.

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