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The nature of the nuclear medium created in high-energy $p/d/^3$He-$A$ collisions is puzzling. On the one hand, soft particle production displays collective signals that evolve continuously with system size and may indicate the formation of a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) droplet in such collisions. On the other hand, the ``jet quenching'' phenomenon--another key signature of the existence of QGP--has not been unambiguously identified. I will present a systematic study of heavy and light-flavor hadron quenching from large to small colliding systems at RHIC and LHC (also including future O-O collisions).
I will start by introducing the theoretical framework of this study, i.e., a factorized calculation with initial and final-state medium effects obtained from the soft collinear effective theory with Glauber gluons (SCET$_G$) and a hydrodynamics description of the medium. Then, using this calculation, I will discuss three problems that need to be addressed before we can unambiguously identify jet quenching in small systems. The first one is the determination of the number of binary collisions in small systems. Second, what is the ``no QGP'' baseline for high-transverse-momentum particle production, especially when initial-state cold nuclear matter effects become comparable in magnitude to QGP effects? Finally, can jet quenching help to distinguish the nature of the medium (QGP v.s. hot hadronic matter) near $T_c$?
Bio:
Dr. Weiyao Ke graduated from PKU in 2014 and obtained his Ph.D. from Duke University in 2019. He has been a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley/LBNL, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. His primary research focus includes the theoretical and computational study of jet-medium interactions and the use of QCD hard probes to understand the properties of the quark-gluon plasma and atomic nuclei. He also develops modern statistical inference methods and applies to high-energy nuclear physics.
Tecent Meeting: 105-769-426
Dr. Baochi Fu