The unexpected uses of a bowling pin: anisotropic flow in fixed-target ^208Pb+^20Ne collisions as a probe of quark-gluon plasma
arxiv(2024)
Abstract
The System for Measuring Overlap with Gas (SMOG2) at the LHCb detector
enables the study of fixed-target ion-ion collisions at relativistic energies
(√(s_ NN)∼100 GeV in the centre-of-mass). With input from
ab initio calculations of the structure of ^16O and ^20Ne, we
compute 3+1D hydrodynamic predictions for the anisotropic flow of Pb+Ne and
Pb+O collisions, to be tested with upcoming LHCb data. This will allow the
detailed study of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) formation as well as experimental
tests of the predicted nuclear shapes. Elliptic flow (v_2) in Pb+Ne
collisions is greatly enhanced compared to the Pb+O baseline due to the shape
of ^20Ne, which is deformed in a bowling-pin geometry. Owing to the large
^208Pb radius, this effect is seen in a broad centrality range, a unique
feature of this collision configuration. Larger elliptic flow further enhances
the quadrangular flow (v_4) of Pb+Ne collisions via non-linear coupling, and
impacts the sign of the kurtosis of the elliptic flow vector distribution
(c_2{4}). Exploiting the shape of ^20Ne proves thus an ideal method to
investigate the formation of QGP in fixed-target experiments at LHCb, and
demonstrates the power of SMOG2 as a tool to image nuclear ground states.
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