The hottest substance ever created in a laboratory vibrates with the same mathematical symmetry as a simple water molecule.
Quark-Gluon Plasma is a perfect fluid that existed just moments after the Big Bang and is now recreated in particle colliders. This study identified that the fluctuations in this plasma can be broken down into thermal and geometric modes. These modes behave exactly like the vibrational patterns of a three-atom molecule. It is a stunning example of how the same rules of symmetry apply to the tiniest molecules and the most extreme states of matter. This link helps physicists predict how the early universe flowed and expanded.
Thermal and geometric normal modes of spectral fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions
arXiv · 2604.26731
The transverse momentum spectrum of charged particles in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions fluctuates event-by-event, encoding signatures of underlying collective dynamics. Such fluctuations originate from a combined effect of thermal and geometric fluctuations in the initial state. We present a direct decomposition of these spectral fluctuations through principal component analysis performed on the joint covariance structure of normalized spectrum, mean transverse momentum and elliptic fl