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Identifying α-Cluster Configurations in ^{20}Ne via Ultracentral Ne+Ne Collisions
Pei Li1, Bo Zhou1, Guo-Liang Ma1
1Fudan University, Fudan University, Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Ion-beam Application (MOE), Institute of Modern Physics, Shanghai 200433, China and Shanghai Research Center for Theoretical Nuclear Physics, NSFC and , Shanghai 200438, China.
None:
The initial-state geometry in relativistic heavy-ion collisions provides a novel probe to nuclear cluster structure. For ^{20}Ne, a novel approach is proposed to distinguish between the cluster configurations (5α versus α+^{16}O) in order to gain insight into nuclear structure transitions governed by many-body quantum correlations. Through analytical calculations with the microscopic Brink model and event-by-event simulations using the hydrodynamic framework, we establish the normalized symmetric cumulant NSC(3, 2) and the Pearson coefficient ρ_{2}(v_{2}^{2},δ[p_{T}]) as quantitative discriminators to reveal enhanced cluster degrees of freedom in the ground state of ^{20}Ne. The ultracentral Ne+Ne collisions at the LHC can experimentally identify these two competing configurations via these flow correlation observables, opening a new paradigm for probing clustering in light nuclei.
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