Pith. sign in

REVIEW 13 cited by

Imaging Shapes of Atomic Nuclei in High-Energy Nuclear Collisions

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2401.06625 v2 pith:2QGEY6F6 submitted 2024-01-12 nucl-ex hep-exhep-phnucl-th

Imaging Shapes of Atomic Nuclei in High-Energy Nuclear Collisions

classification nucl-ex hep-exhep-phnucl-th
keywords nuclearnucleishapescollisionsimagingmethodshapeatomic
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

Atomic nuclei are self-organized, many-body quantum systems bound by strong nuclear forces within femtometer-scale space. These complex systems manifest a variety of shapes, traditionally explored using non-invasive spectroscopic techniques at low energies. However, at these energies, their instantaneous shapes are obscured by long-timescale quantum fluctuations, making direct observation challenging. Here we introduce the ``collective flow assisted nuclear shape imaging'' method, which images the nuclear global shape by colliding them at ultrarelativistic speeds and analyzing the collective response of outgoing debris. This technique captures a collision-specific snapshot of the spatial matter distribution within the nuclei, which, through the hydrodynamic expansion, imprints patterns on the particle momentum distribution observed in detectors. We benchmark this method in collisions of ground state Uranium-238 nuclei, known for their elongated, axial-symmetric shape. Our findings show a large deformation with a slight deviation from axial symmetry in the nuclear ground state, aligning broadly with previous low-energy experiments. This approach offers a new method for imaging nuclear shapes, enhances our understanding of the initial conditions in high-energy collisions and addresses the important issue of nuclear structure evolution across energy scales.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 13 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Quantum Symmetry Restoration and Emergent Effective Deformation in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

    nucl-th 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Rotational symmetry restoration in even-even nuclei generates an effective collision geometry that acts as a low-pass filter exponentially suppressing deformation modes, recovering the classical rigid-rotor limit only...

  2. Thermal and geometric normal modes of spectral fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions

    nucl-th 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Principal component analysis of spectral fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions yields thermal and geometric normal modes that explain 99.5% of variance and account for measured flow observables v0(pT) and v02(pT).

  3. Non-Monotonicity of Transverse Momentum Correlations in Au + Au Collisions at RHIC

    nucl-ex 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    First measurements of pT correlations in Au+Au collisions at 3-7.7 GeV reveal non-monotonic energy dependence in central events with 5 sigma significance, breaking 1/sqrt(N_part) scaling.

  4. Initial spin fluctuations as a probe of cluster spin structure in $^{16}\mathrm{O}$ and $^{20}\mathrm{Ne}$ nuclei

    nucl-th 2025-12 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Alpha clustering in 16O and 20Ne suppresses initial spin fluctuations in relativistic collisions, with a scaled ratio of fluctuations between the two systems proposed as a probe of cluster geometry.

  5. Measurement of the azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.36$ TeV $^{16}$O$+^{16}$O and $^{20}$Ne$+^{20}$Ne collisions with the ATLAS detector

    nucl-ex 2025-09 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    First measurements of v_n (n=2-4) in 5.36 TeV O+O and Ne+Ne collisions show enhanced v2 in central neon collisions consistent with prolate nuclear deformation.

  6. High-order fluctuations of temperature in hot QCD matter

    hep-ph 2025-04 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Introduces a new thermodynamic state function enabling computation of high-order temperature fluctuations in hot QCD matter from heavy-ion collision data, predicting strong suppression and negative skewness in the QGP phase.

  7. Recent highlights from the STAR Experiment

    nucl-ex 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    STAR's Beam Energy Scan-II data reveal non-monotonic fluctuations, hadronic-to-partonic transitions, and first experimental evidence for a weakly bound p-Omega dibaryon state.

  8. Yoctosecond imaging of the ground state of $^{129}$Xe at the Large Hadron Collider

    nucl-th 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Bayesian global fit to Xe-Xe and Pb-Pb LHC data infers nearly maximal triaxiality for the 129Xe ground state and extracts two- and three-particle correlations.

  9. Cumulants of mean transverse momentum and elliptic flow in the hydrodynamic model of heavy-ion collisions

    nucl-th 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Hydrodynamic simulations of heavy-ion collisions demonstrate that cumulants linking mean pT and elliptic flow quantitatively match relations derived from initial-state entropy predictors and moments of harmonic flow.

  10. Equilibrated fraction of QCD matter in high-energy oxygen--oxygen collisions

    nucl-th 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    The equilibrated core in O+O collisions overtakes the nonequilibrium corona above midrapidity multiplicity of about 20, yet corona contributions persist in central events, making pure hydrodynamics inadequate.

  11. The size of the quark-gluon plasma in ultracentral collisions: impact of initial density fluctuations on the average transverse momentum

    nucl-th 2025-11 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Volume variation with multiplicity in ultracentral collisions is small when total entropy scales with nuclear mass number, as shown by relating it to initial density fluctuation profiles.

  12. The shape of differential radial flow $v_0(p_T)$, not its zero-crossing, carries physical information

    nucl-th 2025-04 conditional novelty 5.0

    The shape of v0(pT), not its zero-crossing, encodes physical information about radial flow because centrality and normalization choices only shift the curve vertically without changing its form.

  13. Beam-energy dependence of correlations between mean transverse momentum and anisotropic flow of charged particles in Au+Au collisions at RHIC

    nucl-ex 2024-11 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    STAR reports energy-dependent variances and covariances of [p_T] and v_n^2 in Au+Au collisions from 14.6 to 200 GeV, with the dimensionless ratio remaining similar across energies.