<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">O</mml:mi><mml:mprescripts/><mml:none/><mml:mn>16</mml:mn></mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">O</mml:mi><mml:mprescripts/><mml:none/><mml:mn>16</mml:mn></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:mrow></mml:math> collisions at energies available at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and at the CERN Large Hadron Collider comparing <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mi>α</mml:mi></mml:math> clustering versus substructure
Nicholas Summerfield, Bing-Nan Lu, Christopher Plumberg, Dean Lee, Jacquelyn Noronha-Hostler, A. R. Timmins
Abstract
Collisions of . light and heavy nuclei in relativistic heavy-ion collisions have been shown to be sensitive to nuclear structure. With a proposed $^{16}\mathrm{O}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ run at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) we study the potential for finding $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ clustering in $^{16}\mathrm{O}$. Here we use the state-of-the-art iEBE-VISHNU package with $^{16}\mathrm{O}$ nucleonic configurations from ab initio nuclear lattice simulations. This setup was tuned using a Bayesian analysis on $p\mathrm{Pb}$ and PbPb systems. We find that the $^{16}\mathrm{O}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ system always begins far from equilibrium and that at LHC and RHIC it approaches the regime of hydrodynamic applicability only at very late times. Finally, by taking ratios of flow harmonics we are able to find measurable differences between $\ensuremath{\alpha}$-clustering, nucleonic, and subnucleonic degrees of freedom in the initial state.