arXiv subjects

Weiyao Ke

Publications and source records attributed to Weiyao Ke.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Impact on Final-State Bulk Observables in Heavy-Ion Collisions from an Extended MC Glauber Model of Quantum Rotors

Nuclear structure is closely connected to anisotropic flow in central heavy-ion collisions (HICs), so flow observables provide important probes for constraining nuclear deformation. Conventional Monte Carlo (MC) models typically describe deformed nuclei as classical rotors with definite orientations, whereas the ground states of even--even nuclei with $J=0$ are rotationally invariant. Motivated by the importance of rotational symmetry restoration, we systematically investigate symmetric collisions involving the representative even--even nuclei $^{20}\mathrm{Ne}$, $^{28}\mathrm{Si}$, $^{96}\mathrm{Ru}$, and $^{238}\mathrm{U}$ using an extended MC Glauber model that incorporates quantum superposition of nuclear orientations. In the final state, the quantum treatment suppresses elliptic flow $v_2\{2\}$, with the strongest effect observed in ultra-central Ne+Ne collisions. Quantum superposition further induces system-dependent changes in normalized symmetric cumulants and shifts the Pearson correlation between $v_2^2$ and $[p_T]$ toward the corresponding near-spherical reference values. Moreover, the quantum treatment modifies cross-system flow ratios and the U+U/Au+Au covariance ratio used experimentally to constrain nuclear deformation parameters. Our results suggest that the quantum-rotor treatment may affect the interpretation of nuclear structure information inffered from heavy-ion collision final-state observables.

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arXiv2026

From wave-function to fireball geometry: the role of a restored broken symmetry in ultra-relativistic collisions of deformed nuclei

Monte Carlo (MC) Glauber models for high-energy nuclear collisions conventionally treat deformed nuclei as classical rotors, encoding deformation in the one-body distribution of a single intrinsic state. The physical nuclear ground state, however, is rotationally invariant and describes a quantum rotor: a coherent superposition of intrinsic states at different orientations, with shape information encoded in many-nucleon correlations. For axially deformed even-even nuclei, we develop a modified MC Glauber sampling procedure consistent with this rotational symmetry. The model retains information off-diagonal in the basis of orientations through an angular overlap function and a generalized thickness function. We provide a practical prescription for computing both quantities and show that the rotational symmetry of the nuclear ground state is important in central collisions involving light, strongly deformed nuclei: for ${}^{20}\mathrm{Ne}$, the elliptic eccentricity is reduced by approximately $10\%$ level relative to the classical-rotor treatment. These results highlight the importance of incorporating quantum-mechanical constraints when relating intrinsic nuclear deformation to the QGP geometry in relativistic nuclear collisions.

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arXiv2026

Machine Learning Meets High-Energy Nuclear Physics: From Pattern Recognition to Physics-Integrated Discovery

Machine learning (ML) in high-energy nuclear physics (HENP) is entering a new stage in which physical knowledge is incorporated more directly into data analysis, simulation, and physics inference. This mini-review focuses on developments that have matured in the past several years. Whereas earlier applications emphasized event classification, pattern recognition, and surrogate models for selected observables, recent work has moved toward physics-integrated workflows: calibrated Bayesian extraction of QCD matter properties, dense-matter equation-of-state inference from heavy-ion and neutron-star data, generative event modeling, neural unfolding of weak physical signals, differentiable inverse solvers, gauge-equivariant and diffusion-based lattice-field samplers, and neural reconstruction of model functions in holographic QCD. We survey recent applications of ML in heavy-ion collisions, neutron-star physics, lattice QFT, and holographic or continuum QCD. The emphasis is not on ML architectures alone, but on how they enter concrete physics workflows, how physical constraints such as symmetries, conservation laws, causality, thermodynamic stability, and topology are imposed, and how uncertainty quantification and validation determine whether an AI-assisted result can support a reliable physics conclusion.

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arXiv2026

In medium evolution of the energy-energy correlators

In this work, we present a first-principles analysis of the scale evolution of the two-point energy-energy correlator (EEC) for quark and gluon jets propagating through QCD matter. The EEC is a jet substructure observable that encodes the angular distribution of energy flow within jets and has proven valuable for precision tests of QCD in elementary collisions. Extending this framework to reactions with nuclei, we derive a factorized description of the in-medium EEC using Soft Collinear Effective Theory with Glauber gluon interactions, allowing systematic inclusion of medium-induced interactions. Working in the opacity expansion, we compute the medium-modified quark and gluon jet functions at one loop and perform leading-logarithmic resummation of large-scale logarithms. We find an experimentally accessible kinematic regime where medium effects manifest directly through medium-induced corrections to the anomalous dimensions, providing a transparent probe of in-medium dynamics. We test the theoretical framework by comparing our analytic predictions with EEC measurements in p-Pb collisions and discuss its implications for small collision systems (O-O) and the EIC.

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arXiv2026

Unified description of longitudinal and transverse parton dynamics in cold nuclear matter

We present a unified description of longitudinal momentum evolution and transverse-momentum broadening in cold nuclear matter using soft collinear effective theory with Glauber gluon interactions (SCET$_{\rm G}$). In a finite nucleus, Landau--Pomeranchuk--Migdal interference couples medium-induced energy loss to the transverse scale resolved by the observable. Our framework combines RG evolution of impact-parameter-dependent energy loss with BFKL-type rapidity evolution of the collision kernel, improved by kinematical constraints and running coupling. With a common set of cold-nuclear-matter parameters, it accounts for the main nuclear modification patterns in semi-inclusive DIS and Drell--Yan production and provides predictions for TMD hadron multiplicities at the EIC. We also discuss the one-point energy correlator in DIS, whose energy weighting suppresses the leading final-state energy-loss contribution. In the EIC kinematics studied, the residual dynamical corrections are small, leaving the nuclear modification dominated by the initial-state nuclear parton distributions.

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arXiv2026

Adiabatic hydrodynamization with transverse spatial gradients in boost-invariant plasmas

The quantitative success of relativistic viscous hydrodynamics in describing the short-lived quark--gluon plasma raises a fundamental question: how does far-from-equilibrium QCD matter approach hydrodynamic behavior so rapidly? Microscopic kinetic-theory studies have related this onset to attractor dynamics, but typically assume transverse homogeneity. We relax this assumption by introducing gradient modes with finite transverse wave number $k$, extending the analysis of arXiv:2212.00820. These couple different spherical harmonics of the momentum distribution, and the resulting dynamics is controlled by the competition among the expansion rate $1/τ$, the collision rate $1/τ_R$, and the gradient scale $k$. At early times, longitudinal expansion suppresses this coupling, and different spherical harmonic sectors follow their homogeneous attractors. We find that, at later times and sufficiently small $k$, this gradient coupling drives the system toward a global attractor manifold spanned by hydrodynamic sound and shear modes, on a timescale $τ_D$ that depends on both the azimuthal harmonic $m$ and $kτ_R$. For sufficiently large $kτ_R$, the spectral gap closes: perturbations retain finite damping rates and therefore equilibrate, but no longer follow an isolated hydrodynamic attractor or admit a reduced description involving only a few hydrodynamic modes.

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arXiv2026

Tracing Gluon Saturation through Hadronization at EIC

Gluon saturation provides a window into the nonlinear nature of the strong interaction in nuclear matter. One direct consequence of saturation is the $\boldsymbol{k}_T$ broadening in the final state.We investigate how hadronization reshapes conventional signatures of gluon saturation at EIC within a complete event-generator framework. To this end, we implement in eHIJING an initial-state-radiation algorithm based on nonlinear small-$x$ evolution and complete the events with beam remnants, final-state radiation, and hadronization. In our simulations, the signal of parton-level nuclear $\boldsymbol{k}_T$ broadening is strongly diluted in both the nucleon energy correlator and leading-dihadron azimuthal decorrelation after hadronization. Global hadronic recoil, by contrast, remains sensitive to the underlying $\boldsymbol{k}_T$ broadening. We further demonstrate that Bayesian unfolding of the global hadronic recoil provides access to the underlying hard-scattering $\boldsymbol{k}_T$ distribution. These results establish the global hadronic recoil as a promising saturation observable at the EIC.

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arXiv2026

Tracing Vacuum Hadronization with Conserved Currents

We show that color triality constrains the nonperturbative states that screen a Wilson-line endpoint, allowing the joint flows of net electric charge, baryon number, and strangeness to probe QCD vacuum hadronization. Whether evaluated from resolved hadrons in a jet initiated by a quark of flavor $f$ or from the corresponding charge correlators, these flows satisfy the Gell-Mann--Nishijima relation $\langle Q_{\rm flow}\rangle_f \simeq I_{3,f} +\frac{1}{2}\left( \langle S_{\rm flow}\rangle_f +\langle B_{\rm flow}\rangle_f \right)$, where $I_{3,f}$ is the third component of the initiating-quark isospin. The net jet baryon number, $\langle B_{\rm flow}\rangle_f\simeq \frac{r_{qq}}{1+r_{qq}}$, directly probes the relative probability of a diquark--antidiquark vacuum excitation, with $r_{qq}$ the diquark-to-quark production ratio. Thus, for $r_{qq}\ll1$, the baryon number carried by the jet is substantially suppressed relative to the initiating-quark value $B_f=1/3$. Likewise, the strange-to-light pair-production ratio, defined by $u\bar u:d\bar d:s\bar s=1:1:r_s$, is encoded in the measured jet strangeness $\langle S_{\rm flow}\rangle_f \simeq S_f+\frac{3r_s}{2+r_s} \left(\frac{1}{3}- \langle B_{\rm flow}\rangle_f\right)$, predicting a nonzero mean net strangeness even in $u$- and $d$-initiated jets. The conserved-current moments appearing in these relations are independent of the renormalization scale. Their simultaneous measurement therefore provides a direct, flavor-resolved probe of vacuum pair production and quantum-number transport during hadronization.

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arXiv2026

Study the Longitudinal Entropy Deposition using d+Au Collision

Relativistic hydrodynamics successfully describes bulk observables in symmetric heavy-ion collisions, but struggles to reproduce charged-particle rapidity distributions in asymmetric systems such as d+Au collisions. To address this challenge, we introduce two key improvements to the initial-state modeling: sampling deuteron configurations from an ab initio wavefunction, and developing a new longitudinal entropy deposition model that incorporates a transverse entropy deposition coefficient $β$ and a rapidity loss term scaling with the number of binary collisions $n_{\rm BC}$. Using the (3+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamic model CLVisc coupled with the SMASH afterburner, we simulate d+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 200$ GeV and successfully reproduce the experimental charged-particle pseudorapidity distributions across five centrality classes with $β= 0.35$, as well as the transverse momentum spectra and anisotropic flow $v_n$. The entropy deposition coefficient $β$ and the $n_{\rm BC}$-dependent rapidity loss are found to play crucial roles in achieving this agreement. Furthermore, this longitudinal entropy deposition framework demonstrates excellent universality, as validated in p+Au, $^3$He+Au, and Au+Au collisions. Our entropy deposition mechanism could be widely applied to recent light-nucleus collisions such as O+O, Ne+Ne, and asymmetric systems like Pb+Ne at LHC energies, thereby better constraining the nuclear structure of light nuclei through an improved longitudinal description.

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arXiv2026

Fermi-liquid view of viscosity in cold and dense nucleon matter

We develop a framework to calculate transport properties in cold, dense relativistic quasiparticle system within the Fermi-liquid theory at the mean-field level. Building on our previous study J. Li \emph{et al.} [Phys. Rev. C \textbf{111}, 044904 (2025)], we start from the linearized relativistic Boltzmann equation tailored to quasiparticles with medium-dependent dispersion relation and implement Landau matching conditions, proving that the bulk viscosity is manifestly nonnegative. A low-temperature expansion then yields leading-order ($T/μ^*$) expressions for the shear ($η$) and bulk ($ζ$) viscosities, where the behavior $ζ/η\propto (T/μ^*)^4$ in the degenerate regime is found to be robust against quasiparticle mass correction. We couple the kinetic framework to a Walecka-type mean-field equation of state and compute $η$ and $ζ$ for cold, dense nucleon matter. The transport properties of nucleonic matter in the degenerate regime can be relevant for intermediate beam-energy nuclear experiments.

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arXiv2026

Uncover the correlation between jet energy correlators and multiplicity fluctuations

The energy-energy correlator (EEC) and multiplicity are two fundamental observables probing complementary aspects of QCD jets: the former characterizes the angular structure of energy flows in a scale-dependent manner, while the latter is sensitive to the entire history of particle production. In this \emph{Letter}, we uncover a nontrivial correlation between them by studying the EEC as a function of jet internal multiplicity. We introduce the multiplicity-conditioned EEC jet function (MCJF) and perform a factorization calculation to next-to-leading order accuracy. It is found that, for jet samples selected at a given normalized multiplicity $ν= N_{\rm ch}/\langle N_{\rm ch} \rangle$, the EEC in the angular region $Λ_{\rm QCD}/p_{T,\rm jet}\llχ\ll R$ acquires a $ν$-dependent anomalous dimension. Thus the $ν$-conditioned EEC provides a direct and robust probe to the multiplicity generating function in the perturbative regime. In addition, understanding $ν$ dependence of the EEC is also crucial for isolating possible multiplicity-dependent bias effects in the EEC measurements in nuclear environment.

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arXiv2026

Renormalization Group Evolution for In-medium Energy Correlators

We present a first-principles analysis of the renormalization group (RG) evolution of the two-point energy-energy correlator (EEC) in light-quark and gluon jets propagating through nuclear matter. Our work focuses on the analytic structure of the RG equations in the thin-medium regime, highlighting how collinear emissions in the presence of a dense QCD medium reshape the EEC observables. We work in the opacity expansion of the SCET$_{\rm G}$ formalism, where the propagating quarks and gluons interact with the medium via Glauber gluon exchanges. We compute the corresponding one-loop jet functions using the medium-induced splitting kernels at first order in opacity and perform resummation at leading logarithmic (LL) order. In particular, we identify an experimentally accessible regime of jet energies and EEC angles where one can directly investigate the medium-induced scale evolution and extract the corresponding opacity-one correction to the anomalous dimensions. Furthermore, we demonstrate analytically, using the method of regions, the Coulomb-logarithmic enhancement regulated by plasma screening for EEC. We compare our theoretical predictions with experimental data in $p$-Pb collisions and make projections for O-O collisions to test whether energy correlators could serve as sensitive probe of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) dynamics in small collision systems, offering a robust and model-independent avenue for constraining jet evolution in QCD matter.

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arXiv2025

Nonperturbative Heavy-Flavor Transport Approach for Hot QCD Matter

The heavy charm and bottom quarks are unique probes of the transport properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) and its hadronization in high-energy nuclear collisions. A key challenge in this context is to embed the interactions of the heavy quarks in the expanding medium compatible with the strong-coupling nature of the QGP, and thus to unravel the underlying microscopic mechanisms. In the present work we progress toward this goal by combining recent $T$-matrix interactions for elastic scattering with an effective transport implementation of gluon radiation, and apply these in a Langevin framework in a viscous hydrodynamic evolution. Hadronization of heavy quarks is evaluated using a modern recombination model with 4-momentum conservation, supplemented with fragmentation constrained by data in proton-proton collisions. Deploying this approach to charm-hadron observables in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC yields fair agreement with experiment while also identifying areas of further systematic improvement of the simulations and its current input.

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arXiv2025

Open heavy-flavor transport and hadronization in heavy-ion collisions

We develop a comprehensive model for heavy-quark evolution in a realistic QGP, from their production in the initial collision to hadronic freeze-out. Heavy-quark transport is described by a Langevin approach including medium-induced radiation, coupled to a 2+1D viscous hydrodynamic bulk evolution. Transport coefficients are obtained from non-perturbative $T$-matrix calculations with resonant correlations near the transition temperature. Hadronization is implemented via two fragmentation+recombination schemes: an improved sudden coalescence model and a resonance recombination model. We present results for key open heavy-flavor observables, i.e., the nuclear modification factor and elliptic flow, and compare to LHC Pb-Pb data at $\sqrt{s_{\NN}}$=5.02\,TeV.}

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arXiv2025

Internal multiplicity distributions of jets from nonlinear evolution within the jet function framework

Jets selected with high internal charged-particle multiplicity exhibit markedly different substructure patterns compared to inclusive jet samples. Such correlations motivate a systematic study of jet observables as a function of the normalized multiplicity, $ν= N_{\rm ch}/\langle N_{\rm ch}\rangle$. In this work, we develop a theoretical framework for the full charged-particle multiplicity distribution of exclusive and inclusive jets, formulated within the jet-function approach. The hard production and jet function are evaluated at NLO+LL$_R$ accuracy. The internal parton dynamics governing the multiplicity distribution are described by coupled nonlinear branching equations with angular ordering, supplemented by a nonperturbative modeling term that accounts for hadron-level effects. The resulting predictions are validated against \textsc{Pythia8} simulations and compared with CMS data. We examine the effects of both nonperturbative and perturbative components in shaping the multiplicity distribution, and show that Koba--Nielsen--Olesen (KNO) scaling is notably violated in the region $ν> 2$ in the full solution, with a trend consistent with Monte Carlo results. This framework that numerically solves the nonlinear multiplicity evolution goes beyond DLA-like approximations and reproduces key features seen in event generators, providing a solid foundation for future investigations of multiplicity -- conditioned jet substructure within the jet function formalism.

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arXiv2025

Probing cold nuclear matter with energy correlators

The future electron-ion collider (EIC) will produce the first-ever high energy collisions between electrons and a wide range of nuclei, opening a new era in the study of cold nuclear matter. Quarks and gluons produced in these collisions will propagate through the dense nuclear matter of nuclei, imprinting its structure into subtle correlations in the energy flux of final state hadrons. In this article, we apply recent developments from the field of jet substructure, namely the energy correlator observables, to decode these correlations and provide a new window into nuclear structure. The energy correlators provide a calibrated probe of the scale dependence of vacuum quantum chromodynamics (QCD), enabling medium modifications to be imaged and interpreted as a function of scale. Using the eHIJING parton shower to simulate electron-nucleus collisions, we demonstrate that the size of the nucleus is imprinted as an angular scale in the correlators, with a magnitude that is visible for realistic EIC kinematics. We can observe the size difference between the proposed EIC nuclear targets ${}^3$He, ${}^4$He, ${}^{12}$C, ${}^{40}$Ca, ${}^{64}$Cu, ${}^{197}$Au, and ${}^{238}$U, showing that the energy correlators can image femtometer length scales using asymptotic energy flux. Our approach offers a unified view of jet substructure across collider experiments, and provides numerous new theoretical tools to unravel the complex dynamics of QCD in extreme environments, both hot and cold.

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arXiv2025

Bayesian inference of the magnetic field and chemical potential on holographic jet quenching in heavy-ion collisions

Jet quenching is studied in a background magnetic field and a finite baryon chemical potential. The production of energetic partons is calculated using the next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (pQCD) parton model, while the parton energy loss formula is obtained from the AdS/CFT correspondence incorporating the magnetic field and baryon chemical potential effects. Using Bayesian inference, we systemically compare the theoretical calculations with experimental data for the nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ of the large transverse momentum hadrons in different-centrality nucleus-nucleus collisions at 0.2, 2.76 and 5.02 TeV, respectively. The form of the holographic energy loss leads to a strong negative correlation between the magnetic field and the chemical potential after the calibration, from which we discussed the sensitivity of jet quenching phenomena to magnetic field and baryon chemical potential.

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arXiv2025

Transport coefficients of dense nucleon matter at low temperature

The transport property of cold and dense nucleon matter is important for nuclear physics but is relatively less studied than that at finite temperatures. In this paper, we present a primary study of bulk and shear viscosities in the limit $T/μ_B \ll 1$, where $T$ and $μ_B$ are the temperature and the baryon chemical potential. The analysis is performed for a generic system where nucleons are dressed by the condensation of both scalar and vector interactions. Under the relaxation time approximation of the Boltzmann equation, we compute the viscosities of the system to leading power in $T/μ_B$ expansion and establish a relation between the thermodynamic potential and transport coefficients, including bulk viscosity ($ζ$) and shear viscosity ($η$). It is found that hydrodynamic stability ($ζ>0$) imposes additional constraints on the thermodynamic potential. As an example, these relations are applied to the Walecka model. The fluid properties of the cold and dense nucleon matter are characterized by the dimensionless combination of viscosities times the quasi-Fermi momentum over the enthalpy. Furthermore, we discuss the implication of the stability condition on the range of applicability of the model.

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