Recent light-ion collision campaigns — proton-oxygen, oxygen–oxygen and neon–neon runs at the LHC, and oxygen–oxygen collisions at RHIC — have opened a transformative window onto the origins of collective behavior in small QCD systems, and in the study of the system-size dependence of the quark-gluon plasma. Simultaneously, high-energy collisions offer a novel probe of nuclear ground-state structure, with implications potentially extending from nuclear structure, to nuclear astrophysics, to searches for neutrinoless double beta decay.
Driven by these research frontiers, the 2026 EMMI Workshop on Light-Ion Collisions serves as a dedicated forum to synthesize the emerging experimental results, clarify their implications for the field, and discuss scientific cases for ion runs in LHC Run 4 and beyond.
Scientific program:
- Out-of-equilibrium QCD phenomena and onset of collectivity in nuclear collisions
- Onset of jet quenching in small and intermediate systems
- Collectivity of heavy flavors across system sizes and shapes
- Interdisciplinary connections (nuclear structure, nuclear astrophysics, neutrinoless double-beta decay, cold atoms)
- Prospects and opportunities for future ion runs at LHC Run 4 and beyond
Workshop participants are invited to submit abstracts for short oral presentations on topics of direct relevance to the workshop program.
Confirmed Speakers [last update June 2]:
- Andreas Ekström, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
- Katrin Greve, Universität Münster, Germany
- Gaute Hagen, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA
- Alessandro Lovato, Argonne National Laboratory, USA
- Maja Mackowiak-Pawlowska, CERN, Switzerland
- Govert Nijs, CERN, Switzerland
- Jacquelyn Noronha-Hostler, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA
- Alexandre Obertelli, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
- Maria Lucia Sambataro, Università di Catania, Italy
- Maciej Slupecki, CERN, Switzerland
- Alberica Toia, GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Germany
- Jordy de Vries, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Chunjian Zhang, Fudan University, China
- Martin Zwierlein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
- Soeren Schlichting, Universität Bielefeld, Germany
- Thomas Duguet, Université Paris-Saclay, France
- Evgeny Epelbam, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
- Hannah Elfner, GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Germany
- Jean-François Paquet, Vanderbilt University, USA
- Charles Horowitz, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
- Susanne Mertens, Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Germany
The workshop will start on Monday morning (September 21st) and end on Friday after lunch (September 25th). A workshop fee of 150 EUR will be charged to participants. This fee covers coffee breaks, lunches, the welcome reception, and the conference dinner. Financial support will be available for a limited number of early-career researchers.
Konferenzinformationen
Teilnahmewunsch
Die Anmeldephase für diese Veranstaltung läuft derzeit.