English

Constraining $α$-cluster compactness in $^{16}\rm O$ and $^{20}\rm Ne$ at TeV energies using azimuthal anisotropy

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-07-29 v1 High Energy Physics - Experiment High Energy Physics - Theory Nuclear Experiment Nuclear Theory

Abstract

Anisotropic flow in ultra-relativistic light-ion collisions is sensitive to the initial geometry of the colliding nuclei. We investigate whether elliptic flow measurements can constrain the parameters of the proposed α\alpha-clustered nuclear density distributions of 16^{16}O and 20^{20}Ne at LHC energies. Using the hybrid framework IP-Glasma+MUSIC+iSS+UrQMD, we simulate OO and Ne--Ne collisions at sNN=5.36\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.36 TeV for the Woods--Saxon and α\alpha-clustered configurations with varying cluster compactness. The elliptic flow coefficient v2{2,Δη>1}v_2\{2,|\Delta\eta|>1\} is calculated in the kinematic acceptances of ALICE, CMS, and ATLAS detectors and is compared with the Run~3 OO and Ne--Ne experimental measurements. It is observed that the final-state elliptic flow is significantly sensitive to the nuclear geometry, especially in OO collisions, where different configurations lead to distinct centrality dependencies and peak positions of v2v_{2}. By performing a systematic variation of the cluster size and inter-cluster separation in 16^{16}O and 20^{20}Ne nuclei, this work attempts to identify the cluster parameter range that provides the best agreement with the experimental data. These results show that the flow observables in TeV-energy light-ion collisions can be used to optimize the nuclear structure parameters of light nuclei.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.26758,
  title  = {Constraining $α$-cluster compactness in $^{16}\rm O$ and $^{20}\rm Ne$ at TeV energies using azimuthal anisotropy},
  author = {Aswathy Menon Kavumpadikkal Radhakrishnan and Suraj Prasad and Neelkamal Mallick and Raghunath Sahoo and Gergely Gábor Barnaföldi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.26758},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages, 4 captioned figures, submitted for publication