Nuclear structure for high-energy nuclear physics

by Giuliano Giacalone (Universität Heidelberg)

Monday 9 Oct 2023, 16:00 → 17:30 Europe/Zurich

4/2-037 - TH meeting room (CERN)

A number of recent experimental results coming from the BNL RHIC and the CERN LHC indicate that measurements of multi-particle correlations in the final states of heavy-ion collisions are strongly sensitive to many-body correlations of nucleons in the wave functions of the colliding ions.

I review the progress made in matching notions from low-energy nuclear theory to hydrodynamic simulations of high-energy heavy-ion collisions. For each nuclear species that has been utilized in collider experiments, I discuss the properties of the structure of nuclei that have been brought into the picture. I argue that, thanks to these advances, our modeling of the initial condition of heavy-ion collisions is today noticeably more refined compared to just a few years ago.

I discuss the prospects for timely studies at the intersection of nuclear structure and high-energy collisions, emphasizing the choices of nuclear species that can be made to maximize the impact of future experiments at the CERN LHC. Ultimately, I outline a research program aimed at elucidating the complementarity of low and high-energy nuclear experiments as tools to investigate the emergence of atomic nuclei from the underlying QCD.