Fri·Jun 13, 2025Friday·June 13, 2025

1. 01*

   Study of $⟨p_{\mathrm{T}}⟩$ and its higher moments, and extraction of the speed of sound in Pb-Pb collisions with ALICE

   ALICE Collaboration

   Ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions produce a state of hot and dense strongly interacting QCD matter called quark--gluon plasma (QGP). On an event-by-event basis, the volume of the QGP in ultracentral collisions is mostly constant, while its total entropy can vary significantly due to quantum fluctuations, leading to variations in the temperature of the system. Exploiting this unique feature of ultracentral collisions allows for the interpretation of the correlation of the mean transverse momentum of produced charged hadrons and the number of charged hadrons as a measure for the speed of sound. It is determined by fitting the relative increase in transverse momentum with respect to the relative change in the average charged-particle density measured at midrapidity. This study reports the event-average transverse momentum of charged particles as well as the self-normalized variance, skewness, and kurtosis of the event-by-event transverse momentum distribution in ultracentral Pb-Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV per nucleon pair using the ALICE detector. Different centrality estimators based on charged-particle multiplicity or the transverse energy of the event are used to select ultracentral collisions. By ensuring a pseudorapidity gap between the region used to define the centrality and the region used to perform the measurement, the influence of biases on the rise of the mean transverse momentum is tested. The measured values are found to strongly depend on the exploited centrality estimator. The variance shows a steep decrease towards ultracentral collisions, while the skewness variables show a maximum, followed by a fast decrease. These non-Gaussian features are understood in terms of the vanishing of the impact-parameter fluctuations contributing to the event-to-event transverse momentum distribution.

   nucl-exJHEP(2025)·11 citations
2. 02*

   Baryon and Meson Excited States

   L. David Roper (VTech)🇺🇸 · Igor Strakovsky (GWU)🇺🇸

   The masses of fifteen baryon sets and twenty-four meson sets of three or more equal-quantum excited states are fitted by a simple two-parameter logarithm function, $M_n=\alpha Ln(n)+\beta$, where $n$ is the level of radial excitation. The conjecture is made that accurately measured masses using Breat-Wigner PDG2024 data at fixed $J^P$ for baryons and $J^{PC}$ for mesons of all equal-quantum baryons (including LHCb exotic $P_{c\bar{c}}^{+}$s) and meson (including $s\bar{s}$, $s\bar{c}$, $c\bar{c}$, $c\bar{b}$, and $b\bar{b}$) excited states are related by the logarithm function used here; at least for the mass range of currently known excited states. Thus, a universal mass equation for equal-quantum excited-states sets is presented. The masses of twelve baryon sets and sixteen meson sets, with only two equal-quantum excited states in each set, using Breit-Wigner PDG2024 masses and their uncertainties, are fitted by thr universal mass equation.

   ↳ hep-phhep-exnucl-exnucl-thPoS(2026)·0 citations
3. 03*

   Unraveling the neutron skin thickness through jet charge in deep inelastic scattering

   Shan-Liang Zhang🇨🇳 · Enke Wang🇨🇳 · Xin-Nian Wang🇨🇳 · Hongxi Xing🇨🇳

   The neutron skin thickness in neutron-rich nuclei has traditionally been measured using elastic fixed target electron-nucleus scattering since the 1970s. In this paper, we propose a novel probe of the neutron skin thickness through deep inelastic scattering in electron-ion collisions, leveraging the intrinsic correlation between final-state jet charge distribution and initial-state partonic distributions in nucleons. Specifically, we demonstrate the sensitivity of jet charge distribution to the neutron skin thickness in $e$+Pb collisions with varying centralities, and in isobar collisions of $e$+Ru and $e$+Zr. We predict a strong suppression of positive jet charge distribution and an enhancement for negative jet charge distribution in peripheral electron-ion collisions, revealing the neutron skin effect. This proposal can also be extended to photon and Z-boson tagged jet charge distribution in proton-nucleus collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, providing an alternative access to neutron skin thickness.

   ↳ hep-phhep-exnucl-exnucl-th4 citations
4. 04*

   Extraction of Effective Parameters from Transverse Momentum Spectra of Heavy Quarkonia in Proton-Proton Collisions at the LHC

   Peng-Cheng Zhang🇨🇳 · Hailong Zhu🇨🇳 · Fu-Hu Liu🇨🇳 · Khusniddin K. Olimov🇺🇿

   The effective string tension ($\kappa$) in the Schwinger mechanism and the effective temperature ($T$) in Bose-Einstein statistics are extracted from the transverse momentum ($p_T$) spectra of heavy quarkonia produced in proton-proton (p+p) collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Here, $T$ derived from the heavy quarkonium $p_T$ spectra also serves as the initial effective temperature (effective temperature at the initial stage) of small collision systems. This is because, despite the absence of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) formation during the collisions, which leaves $T$ largely unaffected by QGP-related effects, the initial geometric asymmetry and local partonic thermalization still induce radial and transverse flows, thereby contributing to an increase in $T$. The effective parameters ($\kappa$ and $T$) are obtained by fitting the experimental $p_T$ spectra of $J/\psi$ and ${\rm Y}(nS)$ ($n=1$, 2, and 3) within various rapidity intervals, produced in p+p collisions at center-of-mass energies of $\sqrt{s}=13$ and 8 TeV, as measured by the LHCb Collaboration. It is found that the multi-component distribution structured within the framework of the Schwinger mechanism or Bose-Einstein statistics can effectively describe the heavy quarkonium $p_T$ spectra in small collision systems. With decreasing rapidity in the forward region, both $\kappa$ and $T$ increase, indicating a directly proportional relationship between them. Based on $\kappa$, the average minimum strong force radius of participant quarks is determined.

   ↳ hep-phhep-exnucl-exnucl-thAdv.High Energy Phys.(2026)·0 citations

* Reconstructed cohort: no mailing for this day survives in the archive. Papers are grouped by their submission times and arXiv's announcement cut-off, assuming announcement without delay; positions follow identifier order. Validated at ~91% exact-day agreement against the archived era.