LHC collisions reveal oxygen and neon's shifting nuclear geometry
This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies .
This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies .
The short version
- While science textbooks often feature pictures of these and other atoms as if their nuclei are well-defined structures, the reality is more complicated.
- A new study, published in Physical Review Letters , reveals new details about the internal structure of oxygen and neon from the flow of particles coming out of oxygen-oxygen and neon-neon collisions in the LHC.
- Previous high-energy collisions have been used to probe the shapes of heavier nuclei, like uranium.
What happened
Similar flow-like signals were also seen in proton-proton and proton-nucleus (pA) collisions. But lighter nuclei, like oxygen and neon, offer a cleaner test of this geometry than heavy nuclei or proton-based collisions.
Why it matters
This makes symmetric light ion collisions ideal for investigating the final-state collective response in small collision systems." The team analyzed these collisions with the CMS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, with 5.36 TeV per nucleon pair.
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