Nuclear geometry driven symmetry plane correlations in OO and Ne--Ne collisions at the Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

Symmetry-plane correlations (SPCs) are key observables sensitive to the medium's transport properties and are driven by participant-plane correlations (PPCs) in the nuclear overlap region. This study explores the possibility of nuclear-geometry-driven SPCs in Oxygen--Oxygen (OO) and Neon--Neon (Ne--Ne) collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.36$ TeV using nuclear geometry simulations based on Nuclear Lattice Effective Field Theory (NLEFT) and Projected Generator Coordinate Method (PGCM) configurations. We investigate $⟨\cos [4({\psi }_2-{\psi }_4)]{⟩}_{\mathrm{GE}}$ and $⟨\cos [6({\psi }_3-{\psi }_6)]{⟩}_{\mathrm{GE}}$ in OO and Ne--Ne collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.36$ TeV using the A Multi-Phase Transport (AMPT) model. We find that Ne--Ne collisions exhibit larger $⟨\cos [4({\psi }_2-{\psi }_4)]{⟩}_{\mathrm{GE}}$ values than OO collisions, whereas $⟨\cos [6({\psi }_3-{\psi }_6)]{⟩}_{\mathrm{GE}}$ is larger in OO than in Ne--Ne collisions. This behavior indicates a strongly deformed shape of the ${}^{20}$Ne nucleus and a tetrahedral structure of the ${}^{16}$O nucleus. We also explore SPCs for events with tip-tip and body-body collision configurations, which further support these findings.

Comments: 7 pages and 4 captioned figures. Submitted for publication