A unified description of small, peripheral, and large system suppression data from pQCD

Abstract

We present quantitative predictions for the nuclear modification factor in both small and peripheral systems from a pQCD-based energy loss model that is constrained by light- and heavy-flavor suppression data from central heavy-ion collisions. We find nearly identical suppression for central $p / d + A$ collisions as for peripheral $A + A$ collisions, quantitatively consistent with the measured 20% suppression of neutral pions produced in $d + \mathrm{Au}$ collisions by PHENIX, but dramatically inconsistent with the measured 20% enhancement of charged hadrons produced in $p + \mathrm{Pb}$ collisions by ATLAS. We demonstrate that this equivalence of central small system suppression and peripheral large system suppression is insensitive to the underlying energy loss model.