Centrality-dependent nuclear modification from hard-soft correlations in the glasma

Abstract

We present first predictions from the saturation-physics-based framework IP-Glasma for the nuclear modification factor R_AB as a function of centrality in p + O, p + Pb, O + O, and Pb + Pb collisions due only to initial-state effects. The same framework is responsible for both soft (p_T ≲ 3 GeV) and semi-hard (5 GeV ≲ p_T ≲ 20 GeV) particle production, enabling the study of initial-state correlations between bulk and intermediate-p_T particle production from a first-principles framework. We show that, tuned only to HERA data, IP-Glasma accurately predicts the self-normalized multiplicity distributions in p + O, p + Pb, O + O, and Pb + Pb collisions; the minimum-bias nuclear modification factor in p + O and p + Pb collisions; the centrality-cut nuclear modification factor in p + Pb collisions; and the anomalous suppression of R_AA observed in very peripheral Pb + Pb collisions. We find that IP-Glasma predicts significantly less suppression than is measured in both √(s_NN) = 5.36 TeV O + O and √(s_NN) = 5.02 TeV Pb + Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, in qualitative agreement with the scenario in which R_AA < 1 is due to final-state energy loss. We show that the inelastic nucleon-nucleon cross section (σ_inel^NN) produced by IP-Glasma is extremely sensitive to the area of the subnucleonic hotspots; the same values of the hotspot area that reproduce the measured σ_inel^NN also reproduce minimum-bias R_pA. Finally, we show that the hard-soft correlations in IP-Glasma arise from event-by-event fluctuations in the color fields, which simultaneously drive enhanced production of both soft and hard particles.

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Cite

BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{faraday2026centralitydependent,
  title = {{Centrality-dependent nuclear modification from hard-soft correlations in the glasma}},
  author = {Coleridge Faraday and W. A. Horowitz and Björn Schenke},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.29886},
  eprint = {2609.29886},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.29886},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Centrality-dependent nuclear modification from hard-soft correlations in the glasma
AU  - Coleridge Faraday
AU  - W. A. Horowitz
AU  - Björn Schenke
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/24
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.29886
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.29886
AB  - We present first predictions from the saturation-physics-based framework IP-Glasma for the nuclear modification factor R_AB as a function of centrality in p + O, p + Pb, O + O, and Pb + Pb collisions due only to initial-state effects. The same framework is responsible for both soft (p_T ≲ 3 GeV) and semi-hard (5 GeV ≲ p_T ≲ 20 GeV) particle production, enabling the study of initial-state correlations between bulk and intermediate-p_T particle production from a first-principles framework. We show that, tuned only to HERA data, IP-Glasma accurately predicts the self-normalized multiplicity distributions in p + O, p + Pb, O + O, and Pb + Pb collisions; the minimum-bias nuclear modification factor in p + O and p + Pb collisions; the centrality-cut nuclear modification factor in p + Pb collisions; and the anomalous suppression of R_AA observed in very peripheral Pb + Pb collisions. We find that IP-Glasma predicts significantly less suppression than is measured in both √(s_NN) = 5.36 TeV O + O and √(s_NN) = 5.02 TeV Pb + Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, in qualitative agreement with the scenario in which R_AA < 1 is due to final-state energy loss. We show that the inelastic nucleon-nucleon cross section (σ_inel^NN) produced by IP-Glasma is extremely sensitive to the area of the subnucleonic hotspots; the same values of the hotspot area that reproduce the measured σ_inel^NN also reproduce minimum-bias R_pA. Finally, we show that the hard-soft correlations in IP-Glasma arise from event-by-event fluctuations in the color fields, which simultaneously drive enhanced production of both soft and hard particles.
ER  -

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