Paper detail

A unified description of the reaction dynamics from pp to pA to AA collisions

There is little doubt that in heavy ion collisions at the LHC and RHIC, we observe a hydrodynamically expanding system, providing strong evidence for the formation of a Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) in the early stage of such collisions. These observations are mainly based on results on azimuthal anisotropies, but also on particle spectra of identified particles, perfectly compatible with a hydrodynamic evolution. Surprisingly, in p-Pb collisions one observes a very similar behavior, and to some extent even in p-p. We take these experimental observations as a strong support for a unified approach to describe proton-proton (p-p), proton-nucleus (p-A), and nucleus-nucleus (A-A) collisions, with a plasma formation even in tiny systems as in p-p scatterings.