Hadron Ion Tea (HIT) Seminar Series


[formerly the Heavy Ion Tea Seminars]


Nuclear Science Division


Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

HIT seminars are on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3:30pm Pacific Time   (unless otherwise noted)

Organizers: Shujie Li, Dimitra Pefkou, Nu Xu, & Wenbin Zhao

HIT zoom link 

Previous seminars can be viewed on our HIT Youtube Channel

Upcoming seminars

Welcome to our Hadron-Ion Tea Seminar Series in 2024!  All talks are available on zoom, some are in-person as well - we hope you join us!

Tuesday, March 26th, 3:30PM (in-person and on zoom)

Dr. Mesut Arslandok  (Yale University)

Host: Volker Koch


"Exploring the QCD phase diagram and hunting for new physics via heavy-ion collisions in ALICE at the LHC"


  Predictions based on the theory of strong interaction, QCD, imply that, at sufficiently high energy densities, nuclear matter transforms into a state called quark-gluon plasma (QGP), in which quarks and gluons move freely. Ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions are ideal environments to study this phase transition, which can be explored via fluctuations of conserved charges such as electric charge, strangeness and baryon number. Moreover, these collisions offer opportunities to probe physics beyond the Standard Model, which will become feasible during the data collection periods of LHC Runs 3 and 4 thanks to the upgraded gas electron multiplier-based time projection chamber of the ALICE detector.


In this talk, I will give an overview of the insights gained from the results of the ALICE collaboration regarding the QCD phase diagram, along with a novel program aimed at searching for new physics beyond the Standard Model utilizing the ALICE TPC. Finally, I will wrap up by discussing the future perspectives of the ALICE collaboration in both of these endeavors, looking

ahead to the future heavy-ion detector, called ALICE3, planned for the early 2030s.

Tuesday, April 2nd, 3:30PM (in-person and on zoom)

Dr. Misak Sargsian (Florida International University)

Host: Shujie Li

"Short Range Nuclear Dynamics Beyond Two-Nucleon Correlations"


With the continuing progress in experimental studies of  high energy nuclear processes we are arriving at the point when reliable investigations can be done in probing three-nucleon (3N) short range correlations (SRCs) as well as exploring possible onset of quark degrees of freedom in the nuclear structure at very short distances.

The 3N SRCs are important for realistic modeling of the equation of state of super dense nuclear matter, since such correlations are important in predicting neutron stars above two solar masses.

Probing quark degrees of freedom in short range correlations allows us to understand the limits of nuclear densities at which the nucleonic matter transitions to possible quark matter.

Theoretical approaches in modeling high momentum component of nuclear wave function that includes 3N SRCs and quark degrees of freedom will be discussed. For each phenomena the specific predictions will be presented which can be verified at currently available energies in electron-nuclear scattering processes. Briefly will discuss also possibilities of SRC studies with target fragmentation processes at EIC.


Tuesday, April 9th, 3:30PM (in-person and on zoom)

Dr. Ting-Wai Chiu (National Taiwan University)

Host: Dimitra Pefkou

"Symmetries of spatial correlators of heavy and light mesons in high temperature lattice QCD"


I studied the spatial correlators of mesons in N_f=2+1+1 lattice QCD with optimal domain-wall quarks at the physical point for seven temperatures in the range T ~ 190-1540 MeV. The meson operators include a complete set of Dirac bilinears, and each for six flavor combinations. I discuss their implications for the hierarchic restoration of chiral symmetry from SU(2)_L x SU(2)_R x U(1)_A to SU(3)_L x SU(3)_R xU(1)_A , and to SU(4)_Lx SU(4)_R x U(1)_A , as the temperature is increased from 190 MeV to 1540 MeV, and its impacts to the suppression

of the production heavy mesons in heavy ion collision experiments. Moreover, I discuss the emergence of approximate $SU(2)_{CS}$ symmetry and its physical implications. 


Tuesday, April 16th, 3:30PM (in-person and on zoom)

Dr. Farid Salazar (University of Washington)

Host: Wenbin Zhao

"Searching for a universal limit of all nuclear matter: Mining for gluon saturation at colliders"


A major pillar of the scientific program of the future Electron-Ion Collider and upcoming upgrades for the Large Hadron Collider is the discovery and characterization of a new regime of nuclear matter, known as color glass condensate (CGC), dominated by a highly dense and saturated system of gluons. Predictions from the CGC effective theory have been confronted with experimental data from HERA, RHIC, and the LHC, where compelling but not definitive signatures of gluon saturation have been observed [1]. The unambiguous determination of this universal limit of all nuclear matter necessitates precise experimental measurements as well as pushing the frontier of theory calculations.

In this seminar, I will review the state-of-the-art precision calculations for various processes in the CGC/saturation formalism. I will focus on our recent work on double [2][3] and single [4] semi-inclusive jet production in deep inelastic scattering, which reveals the need for joint high energy and soft gluon resummation and their interplay to accurately uncover the observable signatures of saturation phenomena in existing and future colliders. If time allows, I will discuss prospects for extending the precision program to a class of observables where the nuclear target remains intact, thus providing a tomographic picture of hadronic and nuclear matter at high energies. 


Tuesday, April 23rd, 3:30PM (in-person and on zoom)

Dr. Joseph Karpie (Jefferson Lab)

Host: Dimitra Pefkou

"Calculating what you're made of: Partons and the Lattice"


Many interactions with nuclei can be described in terms of convolutions of universal parton distributions. These parton distributions describe the way quarks and gluons distribute themselves within the hadrons in terms of their fraction of the total momentum. Over the past decade these distributions have been inferred from matrix elements calculated with Lattice QCD in analogous methods to those used for experiment. From these data the evolution of the parton distributions can also be determined independent of a PDF analysis. Also, the Lattice QCD matrix elements can be included as prior information in global analysis of experimental cross sections leading to significantly improved understanding of the structure in a wide range of the momentum fraction.


Tuesday, April 30th, 3:30PM (in-person and on zoom)

Dr. Daniel Hackett (Fermilab)

Host: Dimitra Pefkou

"Machine-learned flows for QCD"

Abstract coming soon!


Tuesday, May 7th, 3:30PM (in-person and on zoom)

Zhiquan Sun (MIT)

Host: Dimitra Pefkou

Title and abstract coming soon!


Tuesday, May 14th, 3:30PM (in-person and on zoom)

Dr. Anar Rustamov (GSI)

Host: Nu Xu


"Decoding the QCD Phase Transition via Cumulants of Particle Multiplicity Distributions in High-Energy Nuclear Collisions"

Abstract coming soon!

Tuesday, May 28th, 3:30PM (in-person and on zoom)

Meijian Li (Santiago de Compostela Univeersity)

Host: Xin-Nian Wang

"Scattering and gluon emission of a dressed quark in colored field"

Following the non-perturbative light-front Hamiltonian formalism developed in the preceding works [Phys. Rev. D 104, 056014 (2021), Phys. Rev. D 108, 036016 (2023)], we investigate the scattering and gluon emission of dressed quark states inside a SU(3) colored background field. We consider the scenario in deep inelastic scattering and in heavy ion collisions, where the quark originates from far outside the background field and is described by the light-front wavefunction of the QCD eigenstate in the |q>+|qg> Fock space. We perform numerical simulations of the real-time quantum state evolution of an initially dressed quark state at various energy and medium configurations. With the obtained light-front wavefunction of the evolved state, we extract the quark jet transverse momentum distribution, the cross section, and the gluon emission rate. This investigation provides a novel systematic description of the quark scattering process inside colored medium using a non-perturbative formalism.


Tuesday, June 4th, 3:30PM (on zoom)

Chun Shen (Wayne State University)

Host: Wenbin Zhao

Title and abstract coming soon!