Nuclear structure through the lens of heavy ion collisions

Thursday Sep 3, 2026, 1:00 PM → 6:30 PM Europe/Zurich

Auditorium Joliot Curie (IJCLab)

Laure Marie Massacrier (Université Paris-Saclay (FR)), Olga Bessidskaia Bylund (Université Paris-Saclay (FR)), Vladimir Manea (Université Paris-Saclay (FR))

This local workshop aims at gathering the low energy nuclear experimental and theoretical communities, with the high energy QCD experimental LHC community, in order to explore the opportunities offered by new observables measured at the LHC in order to constrain the structure of the nucleus.

The LHC has recently completed its operations after almost 2 decades of successful running, providing proton-proton, heavy-ion and recently light-ion collisions at unprecedented energies. While preparing for the future high-luminosity era, CERN is investigating which ions to collide next. This workshop is therefore timely to contribute to the CERN new ion initiative for Run 4, especially in view of the EMMI workshop (https://indico.gsi.de/event/25022/). 

We will provide a brief selected overview of measurements related to nuclear shape in both high-energy and low-energy physics, discuss possible measurements at the LHC in Run 3 and brainstorm ideas for the high-luminosity era. We want to explore the complementarity with low-energy measurements and try to address open questions in theoretical nuclear physics. The workshop contains two experimental (high and low energy) and one theoretical overview talk, with ample time for discussion.

There is no workshop fees. A zoom link is provided for those who cannot attend in person. We would like to have an approximate number of participants by the end of July in order to prepare the coffee break and thus appreciate an early registration for in-person attendees. 

We look forward to welcome you in Orsay.

Theoretical concepts

Convener: Vittorio Soma

1 Imaging many-body correlations in nuclei via symmetric ultra-central ion-ion collisions

I will summarize the recent developments addressing the quantitative connection between the ab initio description of inter-nucleon correlations inside nuclei and the anisotropy in the azimuthal hadronic flow in the final state of symmetric ultra-central ion-ion collisions. Before that, I will briefly introduce

1) The "ab initio" (i.e. in medias res) theoretical approach to atomic nuclei

2) The concept of "deformation" in nuclei (and the common misconceptions that come with it)

Speaker: Thomas Duguet (CEA)

duguet_ijclab_online.pdf

duguet_ijclab_online.pptx

2:30 PM Discussion

Coffee break

Nuclear shape in high-energy and low-energy experiments

Convener: Dr David Verney (Université Paris-Saclay (FR))

2 Nuclear shape and clustering from low-energy experiments

Speakers: Dr David Verney (Université Paris-Saclay (FR)), Didier Beaumel (IJCLab, Orsay, France), Vladimir Manea (Université Paris-Saclay (FR))

Meeting HIC@IJCLab - DB - post.pdf

Meeting HIC@IJCLab - DB - post.pptx

VladimirManea-nuclear-shape-LE.pdf

VladimirManea-nuclear-shape-LE.pptx

3 Nuclear shape in high energy experiments

We discuss observables related to nuclear shape in high-energy physics, presenting results from both heavy- and light-ion collisions with ALICE, LHCb and STAR. We also show projections for future measurements and discuss possible opportunities for the LHC Run 4 with new species of ions. Talk duration ~40 minutes, followed by discussion.

Speakers: Laure Marie Massacrier (Université Paris-Saclay (FR)), Olga Bessidskaia Bylund (Université Paris-Saclay (FR))

Bylund_HighEnergy.pdf

NuclearStructure.pdf

General discussion