The next decade of heavy-ion phenomenology will be significantly shaped by the expansion of experimental reach into far forward kinematics. Upcoming detector upgrades, such as the ALICE FoCal programme and STAR forward calorimetry, require robust theoretical baselines to interpret baryon stopping in regions where standard boost-invariant models fail. We present a fully 3+1D classical transport...
Oxygen–-Oxygen (OO) collisions provide an important intermediate system between proton–proton and light-ion collisions, offering a unique opportunity to investigate particle production and collective effects in a relatively light-ion collision system.
In this contribution, OO collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.36$ TeV were simulated using the EPOS4[1] event generator. The nuclear...
Signatures of collective behaviour consistent with a QGP-like medium have been observed in proton–lead (p–Pb) collisions, but jet quenching has not been observed despite theoretical predictions of partonic energy loss. The nuclear modification factor, a common signature of jet quenching, can be affected by biases introduced by multiplicity-based centrality selection.
In p–Pb collisions,...
High-energy particles are suppressed as they traverse the quark-gluon plasma, but the initial-state contribution to this suppression—or lack thereof—in small systems remains largely unconstrained. We use the saturation-physics-based framework IP-Glasma to predict the nuclear modification factor as a function of centrality in p+Pb, O+O, and Pb+Pb collisions due only to initial-state effects....
Relativistic heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produce a deconfined quark-gluon plasma (QGP) under extreme temperatures, energy densities, and electromagnetic fields. Understanding the influence of these fields on the evolution of the QGP remains an important challenge in heavy-ion physics. This work presents a theoretical and computational model based on the relativistic...
We present predictions from a perturbative quantum chromodynamics energy loss model that includes small system size corrections and event-by-event hydrodynamic evolution of the medium. The effective strong coupling is constrained by a rigorous statistical analysis of high-$p_T$ suppression data from central heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC.
Extrapolating downwards in system size, we...
In this work, we developed a new Glauber model based on the nucleon-nucleon cross sections calculated within the KMR/SHRiMPS model as implemented in the SHERPA event generator. These cross sections arise from a well-motivated phenomenological calculation from which a non-trivial impact parameter emerges naturally, without any ad-hoc assumptions. In Eur. Phys. J. C 86, 63 (2026), it was shown...
With the increased luminosity of the Run 3 data-taking at the LHC, more precise measurements of the electroweak bosons ($\text{W}^{\pm}$/$\text{Z}^0$) are now possible. Studying the production of the electroweak bosons in heavy-ion collisions is useful for a variety of physics reasons, with the main goal being to study the formation of the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). Since electroweak bosons are...
Identifying rare events with enhanced sensitivity to deconfined quantum chromodynamics (QCD) matter in high-rate heavy-ion experiments requires fast event-selection methods that are robust against detector effects and theoretical model uncertainties. We present a convolutional neural network (CNN) based approach for event-by-event identification of QGP-sensitive collision patterns using...
The multiplicity dependence of heavy-flavour production provides insight into the interplay between soft and hard processes in proton-proton collisions. By studying the relative yield of J/𝜓 as a function of charged-particle multiplicity, the mechanisms governing quarkonium production in events with different levels of activity can be investigated.
This work uses the EPOS4[1] event...
The initial geometry of a heavy-ion collision is determined by the spatial distribution and fluctuations of the participating nucleons. In small collision systems, such as p+Pb, O+O and Ne+Ne, these spatial distributions can have a pronounced influence on the geometry of the produced matter and its subsequent hydrodynamic evolution. While hydrodynamic models have successfully described a wide...
The path-length dependence of energy loss in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) has been extensively studied through perturbative quantum chromodynamics (pQCD), where energy is lost through both radiative and collisional processes. Collisional energy loss is expected to scale linearly with the path-length $L$, while radiative energy loss scales as $L^2$, and is known to be the dominant mechanism....
Hard probes have historically been central in the study of the fluid of quarks and gluons produced in the collisions of relativistic heavy ions. Objects such as the highly collimated sprays of particles known as jets are produced at very early times in the collision and, therefore, experience the entire evolution of the system. In this work, we explore different jet observables and how they...
