Speaker
Description
Relativistic 16O+16O collisions provide a valuable opportunity to study both the quark-gluon plasma formed in small systems and the intrinsic structure of 16O. Recent implementations of ab initio nuclear configurations in heavy-ion simulations have produced different predictions for cluster-sensitive observables, making it difficult to identify the origin of possible 𝛼-cluster signals. In this work, we introduce a controlled sampling scheme that varies the compactness of 𝛼-cluster-induced multi-nucleon correlations while keeping the one-body density distribution of 16O fixed. This allows us to separate effects driven by the tetrahedral one-body density from those driven by genuine multi-nucleon correlations. We show that the normalized ratios Norm(v2{2}/v2{4}) and Norm(v2{2}/v3{2}), together with their initial-state eccentricity counterparts, provide complementary constraints on initial-condition model dependence and cluster compactness. Hybrid hydrodynamic simulations and comparisons with recent LHC measurements further clarify the extent to which the initial-state signals survive final-state evolution. Our results provide a framework for using relativistic light-ion collisions to constrain cluster correlations in 16O.
