Nuclear Experiment

The NA61/SHINE collaboration studies at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) the onset of deconfinement in hadronic matter by the measurement of particle production in collisions of nuclei with various sizes at a set of energies covering the SPS energy range. This paper presents results on inclusive double-differential spectra and mean multiplicities of π − mesons produced in the 5\% most \textit{central} 7 Be+ 9 Be collisions at beam momenta of 19 A , 30 A , 40 A , 75 A and 150 A GeV/ c obtained by the so-called h − method which does not require any particle identification. The shape of the transverse mass spectra differs from the shapes measured in central Pb+Pb collisions and inelastic p+p interactions. The normalized width of the rapidity distribution decreases with increasing collision energy and is in between the results for inelastic nucleon-nucleon and central Pb+Pb collisions. The mean multiplicity of pions per wounded nucleon in \textit{central} 7 Be+ 9 Be collisions is close to that in central Pb+Pb collisions up to 75 A GeV/ c . However, at the top SPS energy the result is close to the one for inelastic nucleon-nucleon interactions. The results are discussed in the context of predictions for the onset of deconfinement at the CERN SPS collision energies.

Heavy quarks created in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions are mostly produced in hard QCD processes during the early stages of the reaction. They interact with the hot and cold nuclear matter throughout the evolution of the medium via semi-hard and soft processes such as energy loss via gluon radiations and collisions. Nuclear modification of heavy flavors in p-A systems provides insight into cold nuclear matter effects such as (anti)shadowing and k T -broadening, and serves as a baseline for A-A studies. In addition to that the fully reconstructed heavy-flavor jets provide additional information on the flavor (or mass) dependence of fragmentation, color charge effects as well as insight into the contribution of late gluon splitting. In this contribution, we present the measurements of b -jet production in p-Pb collisions at s NN − − − √ =5.02 TeV and c -jet production in pp, p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions measured by the ALICE experiment at the LHC. The measurements of the nuclear modification factors for c -jet in p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions are also presented. The experimental measurements are compared with the results from Monte Carlo event generators (PYTHIA 6, PYTHIA 8 and Herwig 7) and the NLO pQCD calculations (POWHEG+PYTHIA6). We find good agreement of the measurements with the results from Monte Carlo event generators and from NLO pQCD calculations.

Correlations between moments of different flow coefficients are measured in Pb-Pb collisions at s NN ????????=5.02 TeV recorded with the ALICE detector. These new measurements are based on multiparticle mixed harmonic cumulants calculated using charged particles in the pseudorapidity region |η|<0.8 with the transverse momentum range 0.2< p T <5.0 GeV/ c . The centrality dependence of correlations between two flow coefficients as well as the correlations between three flow coefficients, both in terms of their second moments, are shown. In addition, a collection of mixed harmonic cumulants involving higher moments of v 2 and v 3 is measured for the first time, where the characteristic signature of negative, positive and negative signs of four-, six- and eight-particle cumulants are observed, respectively. The measurements are compared to the hydrodynamic calculations using iEBE-VISHNU with AMPT and TRENTo initial conditions. It is shown that the measurements carried out using the LHC Run 2 data in 2015 have the precision to explore the details of initial-state fluctuations and probe the nonlinear hydrodynamic response of v 2 and v 3 to their corresponding initial anisotropy coefficients ε 2 and ε 3 . These new studies on correlations between three flow coefficients as well as correlations between higher moments of two different flow coefficients will pave the way to tighten constraints on initial-state models and help to extract precise information on the dynamic evolution of the hot and dense matter created in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC.

Measurements of multiplicity fluctuations of identified hadrons produced in inelastic p+p interactions at 31, 40, 80, and 158~\GeVc beam momentum are presented. Three different measures of multiplicity fluctuations are used: the scaled variance ω and strongly intensive measures Σ and Δ . These fluctuation measures involve second and first moments of joint multiplicity distributions. Data analysis is performed using the Identity method which corrects for incomplete particle identification. Strongly intensive quantities are calculated in order to allow for a direct comparison to corresponding results on nucleus-nucleus collisions. The results for different hadron types are shown as a function of collision energy. A comparison with predictions of string-resonance Monte-Carlo models: Epos, Smash and Venus, is also presented.

We report measurements of the induced polarization P → of protons knocked out from 2 H and 12 C via the A(e, e ′ p → ) reaction. We have studied the dependence of P → on two kinematic variables: the missing momentum p miss and the "off-coplanarity" angle ϕ pq between the scattering and reaction planes. For the full 360$\degree$ range in ϕ pq , both the normal ( P y ) and, for the first time, the transverse ( P x ) components of the induced polarization were measured with respect to the coordinate system associated with the scattering plane. P x vanishes in coplanar kinematics, however in non-coplanar kinematics, it is on the same scale as P y . We find that the dependence on ϕ pq is sine-like for P x and cosine-like for P y . For carbon, the magnitude of the induced polarization is especially large when protons are knocked out from the p 3/2 shell at very small p miss . For the deuteron, the induced polarization is near zero at small | p miss | , and its magnitude increases with | p miss | . For both nuclei such behavior is reproduced qualitatively by theoretical results, driven largely by the spin-orbit part of the final-state interactions. However, for both nuclei, sizeable discrepancies exist between experiment and theory.

Neutrinoless double beta decay (0v\b{eta}\b{eta}) is considered the best potential resource to access the absolute neutrino mass scale. Moreover, if observed, it will signal that neutrinos are their own anti-particles (Majorana particles). Presently, this physics case is one of the most important research "beyond Standard Model" and might guide the way towards a Grand Unified Theory of fundamental interactions. Since the 0v\b{eta}\b{eta} decay process involves nuclei, its analysis necessarily implies nuclear structure issues. In the NURE project, supported by a Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC), nuclear reactions of double charge-exchange (DCE) are used as a tool to extract information on the 0v\b{eta}\b{eta} Nuclear Matrix Elements. In DCE reactions and \b{eta}\b{eta} decay indeed the initial and final nuclear states are the same and the transition operators have similar structure. Thus the measurement of the DCE absolute cross-sections can give crucial information on \b{eta}\b{eta} matrix elements. In a wider view, the NUMEN international collaboration plans a major upgrade of the INFN-LNS facilities in the next years in order to increase the experimental production of nuclei of at least two orders of magnitude, thus making feasible a systematic study of all the cases of interest as candidates for 0v\b{eta}\b{eta}.

The yield of charged particles opposite to a Z boson with large transverse momentum ( p T ) is measured in 260 pb −1 of pp and 1.7 nb −1 of Pb+Pb collision data at 5.02 TeV per nucleon pair recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The Z boson tag is used to select hard-scattered partons with specific kinematics, and to observe how their showers are modified as they propagate through the quark-gluon plasma created in Pb+Pb collisions. Compared with pp collisions, charged-particle yields in Pb+Pb collisions show significant modifications as a function of charged-particle p T in a way that depends on event centrality and Z boson p T . The data are compared with a variety of theoretical calculations and provide new information about the medium-induced energy loss of partons in a p T regime difficult to measure through other channels.

The atomic nucleus is made of protons and neutrons (nucleons), that are themselves composed of quarks and gluons. Understanding how the quark-gluon structure of a nucleon bound in an atomic nucleus is modified by the surrounding nucleons is an outstanding challenge. Although evidence for such modification, known as the EMC effect, was first observed over 35 years ago, there is still no generally accepted explanation of its cause. Recent observations suggest that the EMC effect is related to close-proximity Short Range Correlated (SRC) nucleon pairs in nuclei. Here we report the first simultaneous, high-precision, measurements of the EMC effect and SRC abundances. We show that the EMC data can be explained by a universal modification of the structure of nucleons in neutron-proton (np) SRC pairs and present the first data-driven extraction of this universal modification function. This implies that, in heavier nuclei with many more neutrons than protons, each proton is more likely than each neutron to belong to an SRC pair and hence to have its quark structure distorted.

The measured inclusive 6 He and 4 He production cross sections of G. Marqu{í}nez-Dur{á}n {\em et al.}, Phys.\ Rev.\ C {\bf 98}, 034615 (2018) are reexamined and the conclusions concerning the relative importance of 1n and 2n transfer to the production of 6 He arising from the interaction of a 22 MeV 8 He beam with a 208 Pb target revised. A consideration of the kinematics of the 2n-stripping reaction when compared with the measured 6 He total energy versus angle spectrum places strict limits on the allowed excitation energy of the 210 Pb residual, so constraining distorted wave Born approximation calculations that the contribution of the 2n stripping process to the inclusive 6 He production can only be relatively small. It is therefore concluded that the dominant 6 He production mechanism must be 1n stripping followed by decay of the 7 He ejectile. Based on this result we present strong arguments in favor of direct, one step four-neutron (4n) stripping as the main mechanism for 4 He production.

A previous study of symmetric collisions of massive nuclei has shown that current models of multi-nucleon transfer (MNT) reactions do not adequately describe the transfer product yields. To gain further insight into this problem, we have measured the yields of MNT products in the interaction of 977 (E/A = 4.79 MeV) and 1143 MeV (E/A = 5.60 MeV) 204 Hg with 208 Pb. We find that the yield of multi-nucleon transfer products are similar in these two reactions and are substantially lower than those observed in the reaction of 1257 MeV (E/A = 6.16 MeV) 204 Hg + 198 Pt. We compare our measurements with the predictions of the GRAZING-F, di-nuclear systems (DNS) and improved quantum molecular dynamics (ImQMD) models. For the observed isotopes of the elements Au, Hg, Tl, Pb and Bi, the measured values of the MNT cross sections are orders of magnitude larger than the predicted values. Furthermore, the various models predict the formation of nuclides near the N=126 shell, which are not observed.