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Exploiting ${}^{20}{Ne}$ Isotopes for Precision Characterizations of Collectivity in Small Systems

Giuliano Giacalone ^1,*, Benjamin Bally ², Govert Nijs ³, Shihang Shen ⁴, Thomas Duguet ^5,6, Jean-Paul Ebran ^7,8, Serdar Elhatisari ^9,10, Mikael Frosini¹¹, Timo A. Lähde^12,13 et al.

Dean Lee ¹⁴, Bing-Nan Lu¹⁵, Yuan-Zhuo Ma¹⁴, Ulf-G. Meißner ^10,16,17, Jacquelyn Noronha-Hostler ¹⁸, Christopher Plumberg ¹⁹, Tomás R. Rodríguez ²⁰, Robert Roth^21,22, Wilke van der Schee^3,23,24, and Vittorio Somà ⁵

¹Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Heidelberg, Philosophenweg 16, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
²ESNT, IRFU, CEA, Université Paris-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
³Theoretical Physics Department, CERN, CH-1211 Genève 23, Switzerland
⁴Institute for Advanced Simulation and Institut für Kernphysik, Forschungszentrum Jülich, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
⁵IRFU, CEA, Université Paris-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
⁶KU Leuven, Instituut voor Kern- en Stralingsfysica, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
⁷CEA, DAM, DIF, 91297 Arpajon, France
⁸Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, Laboratoire Matière en Conditions Extrêmes, 91680 Bruyères-le-Châtel, France
⁹Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering, Gaziantep Islam Science and Technology University, Gaziantep 27010, Turkey
¹⁰Helmholtz-Institut für Strahlen- und Kernphysik and Bethe Center for Theoretical Physics, Universität Bonn, D-53115 Bonn, Germany
¹¹CEA, DES, IRESNE, DER, SPRC, LEPh, 13115 Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France
¹²Institut für Kernphysik, Institute for Advanced Simulation and Jülich Center for Hadron Physics, Forschungszentrum Julich, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
¹³Center for Advanced Simulation and Analytics (CASA), Forschungszentrum Julich, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
¹⁴Facility for Rare Isotope Beams and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA
¹⁵Graduate School of China Academy of Engineering Physics, Beijing 100193, China
¹⁶Institute for Advanced Simulation, Institut für Kernphysik, and Julich Center for Hadron Physics, Forschungszentrum Jülich, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
¹⁷Tbilisi State University, 0186 Tbilisi, Georgia
¹⁸Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe, Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
¹⁹Natural Science Division, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California 90263, USA
²⁰Departamento de Estructura de la Materia, Física Térmica y Electrónica and IPARCOS, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, E-28040 Madrid, Spain
²¹Institut für Kernphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany
²²Helmholtz Forschungsakademie Hessen für FAIR, GSI Helmholtzzentrum, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany
²³Institute for Theoretical Physics, Utrecht University, 3584 CC Utrecht, The Netherlands
²⁴NIKHEF, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

^*Contact author: giacalone@thphys.uni-heidelberg.de

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 012302 – Published 2 July, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/k8rb-jgvq

Abstract

Whether or not femto-scale droplets of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) are formed in so-called small systems at high-energy colliders is a pressing question in the phenomenology of the strong interaction. For proton-proton or proton-nucleus collisions the answer is inconclusive due to the large theoretical uncertainties plaguing the description of these processes. While upcoming data on collisions of ${}^{16}O$ nuclei may mitigate these uncertainties in the near future, here we demonstrate the unique possibilities offered by complementing ${}^{16}O + {}^{16}O$ data with collisions of ${}^{20}{Ne}$ ions. We couple both nuclear lattice effective field theory (NLEFT) and projected generator coordinate method (PGCM) ab initio descriptions of the structure of ${}^{20}{Ne}$ and ${}^{16}O$ to hydrodynamic simulations of ${}^{16}O + {}^{16}O$ and ${}^{20}{Ne} + {}^{20}{Ne}$ collisions at high energy. We isolate the imprints of the bowling-pin shape of ${}^{20}{Ne}$ on the collective flow of hadrons, which can be used to perform quantitative tests of the hydrodynamic QGP paradigm. In particular, we predict that the elliptic flow of ${}^{20}{Ne} + {}^{20}{Ne}$ collisions is enhanced by as much as $1.174 (8)_{stat} (31)_{syst}$ for NLEFT and $1.139 (6)_{stat} (39)_{syst}$ for PGCM relative to ${}^{16}O + {}^{16}O$ collisions for the 1% most central events. At the same time, theoretical uncertainties largely cancel when studying relative variations of observables between two systems. This demonstrates a method based on experiments with two light-ion species for precision characterizations of the collective dynamics and its emergence in a small system.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 012302– Published 2 July, 2025

Vol. 135, Iss. 1 — 2 July 2025

Received 20 February 2024
Accepted 16 June 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/k8rb-jgvq

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by CERN.

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Exploiting ${}^{20}{Ne}$ Isotopes for Precision Characterizations of Collectivity in Small Systems

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Exploiting Ne20 Isotopes for Precision Characterizations of Collectivity in Small Systems

Abstract

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (117)

Exploiting ${}^{20}{Ne}$ Isotopes for Precision Characterizations of Collectivity in Small Systems