Examining the event-shape dependent modifications to charged-particle transverse momentum spectra and elliptic flow in p-Pb collisions at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

Purported signatures of collective dynamics in small systems like proton-proton (pp) or proton-nucleus (p-A) collisions still lack unambiguous understanding. Despite the qualitative and/or quantitative agreement of the data to hydrodynamic models, it has remained unclear whether the harmonic flows in small systems relate to the common physical picture of hydrodynamic collectivity driven by the initial geometry. In the present work, we aim to address this issue by invoking a novel concept of Event Shape Engineering (ESE), which has been leveraged to get some control of the initial geometry in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. We utilise ESE by constructing a reference flow vector, $q_{2}$ that allows to characterise an event based on it's ellipticity. Applying this technique on a data set, simulated from a 3+1D viscous hydrodynamic model EPOS3, we study the event-shape dependent modifications to some of the bulk properties like, inclusive transverse momentum ($p_{T}$) spectra and $p_{T}$-differential $v_{2}$ for p-Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV. Selecting events on the basis of different magnitudes of reference flow vector $q_{2}$, we observe a hint of event-shape induced modifications of $v_{2}$ as a function of $p_{T}$ but, the inclusive $p_{T}$-spectra of charged particles seem to be insensitive to this event-shape selection.