Nuclear Theory/RIKEN Seminar

Multi-particle correlations observed in small collision systems at top LHC energies exhibit signatures which are similar to those observed in large collision systems and generally attributed to the formation of a deconfined quark-gluon plasma (QGP). This suggests that even proton-proton and proton-lead collisions may produce small droplets of QGP which translate spatial inhomogeneities into final-state momentum anisotropies. A primary challenge in testing hydrodynamic descriptions of small collision systems is in modeling the initial stages of the collision. In this talk, I discuss recent efforts to apply Bayesian methodology to parametric descriptions of initial state physics. I show that such methods can be extended to smaller length scales which include partonic degrees of freedom and glean information regarding the fluctuating nature of the proton.