Interplay between core and corona components in high-energy nuclear collisions

Abstract

We establish the updated version of dynamical core--corona initialization framework (DCCI2) as a unified description from small to large colliding systems and from low to high transverse momentum ($p_T$) regions. Using DCCI2, we investigate effects of interplay between locally equilibrated and non-equilibrated systems, in other words, core and corona components in high-energy nuclear collisions. Given experimental multiplicity distributions and yield ratios of $\Omega$ baryons to charged pions as inputs, we extract the fraction of core and corona components in p+p collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV and Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.76$ TeV. We find core contribution overtakes corona contribution as increasing multiplicity above $\langle dN_{\mathrm{ch}}/d\eta \rangle_{|\eta|<0.5} \sim 18$ regardless of the collision system or energy. We also see that the core contribution exceeds the corona contribution only in 0.0-0.95\% multiplicity class in p+p collisions. Notably, there is a small enhancement of corona contribution with $\sim20$\% below $p_T\sim 1$ GeV even in minimum bias Pb+Pb collisions. We find that the corona contribution at low $p_T$ gives $\sim 15$-$38$ $\%$ correction on $v_2\{2\}$ at $N_{\mathrm{ch}}\lesssim 370$. This raises a problem in conventional hydrodynamic analyses in which low $p_T$ soft hadrons originate solely from core components. We finally scrutinize the roles of string fragmentation and the longitudinal expansion in the transverse energy per unit rapidity, which is crucial in initial conditions for hydrodynamics from event generators based on string models.