Atomic nuclei are not just simple spheres but can take the shape of complex, three-dimensional tetrahedrons.
Most people imagine the center of an atom as a round ball of protons and neutrons. High-energy collisions at the Large Hadron Collider reveal that Oxygen-16 nuclei are actually shaped like four-sided pyramids. Neon-20 nuclei were also found to be heavily deformed rather than smooth. These geometric shapes dictate how the particles fly out after a massive collision. Understanding these nuclear geometries is essential for figuring out how the fundamental building blocks of matter are held together.
Nuclear geometry driven symmetry plane correlations in OO and Ne--Ne collisions at the Large Hadron Collider
arXiv · 2605.00866
Symmetry-plane correlations (SPCs) are key observables sensitive to the medium's transport properties and are driven by participant-plane correlations (PPCs) in the nuclear overlap region. This study explores the possibility of nuclear-geometry-driven SPCs in Oxygen--Oxygen (OO) and Neon--Neon (Ne--Ne) collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=5.36$ TeV using nuclear geometry simulations based on Nuclear Lattice Effective Field Theory (NLEFT) and Projected Generator Coordinate Method (PGCM) configuration