Smoking Gun of Nuclear Clusterization in Collisions of Light Relativistic Nuclei

Clustering in Oxygen Nuclei and Spectator Fragments in 16O–16O Collisions at the LHC

“…As reported recently for calculations with a multi-phase transport model (AMPT) [7], the global properties of 16 O- 16 O collisions, such as initial energy density and final chargedparticle multiplicity, remain similar in modelling with α-clustered structure of 16 O and the harmonic oscillator non-clustered density profile of 16 O. However, as shown in Refs.…”

“…The ALICE measurements covered a broad set of observables related to Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions, to understand, in particular, the dependence of the observables on the masses of colliding species. As discussed [2,3], in future LHC runs ALICE and other experiments may benefit from studies of smaller volumes of hot and dense nuclear matter created in 16 O- 16 O collisions to understand the emerging collectivity in interactions of light nuclei in comparison to the already studied interactions of heavy species.…”

“…An interesting feature of 16 O consists of a possible presence of intranuclear 4 He clusters, as suggested by the numbers of neutrons and protons contained in 16 O. The nucleons can be arranged to form four intranuclear α-clusters in 16 O. Tetrahedral configurations of α-clusters were considered for 16 O [4,5] to match the spherical symmetry of the ground states of this nucleus. The coexistence of the clustered states with non-clustered ones is expected.…”

“…The coexistence of the clustered states with non-clustered ones is expected. The contribution of the clustered states to the 16 O ground state was evaluated to be below 30% [6].…”

“…However, as shown in Refs. [8][9][10], a kind of snapshot of the overlap zone of colliding nuclei can be made by exploring the relativistic 16 O- 16 O collisions to reveal the intranuclear clustering in 16 O despite the global spherical symmetry of the tetrahedral state. The cluster structure of initial 16 O may impact the eccentricity of the overlap zone [11], the triangular flow of π ± , K ± , p and p [8,9], and the nuclear modification factor R AA for D-mesons [12].…”