English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Emergent bulk properties of matter governed by the strong nuclear force giverise to physical phenomena across vastly different scales, ranging from theshape of atomic nuclei to the masses and radii of neutron stars. They can beaccessed on Earth by measuring the spatial extent of the outer skin made ofneutrons that characterises the surface of heavy nuclei. The isotope$^{208}$Pb, owing to its simple structure and neutron excess, has been in thiscontext the target of many dedicated efforts. Here, we determine the neutronskin from measurements of particle distributions and their collective flow in$^{208}$Pb+$^{208}$Pb collisions at ultrarelativistic energy performed at theLarge Hadron Collider, which are sensitive to the overall size of the colliding$^{208}$Pb ions. By means of state-of-the-art global analysis tools within thehydrodynamic model of heavy-ion collisions, we infer a neutron skin $\Deltar_{np}=0.217\pm0.058$ fm, consistent with nuclear theory predictions, andcompetitive in accuracy with a recent determination from parity-violatingasymmetries in polarised electron scattering. We establish thus a newexperimental method to systematically measure neutron distributions in theground state of atomic nuclei.

Determination of the neutron skin of $^{208}$Pb from ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions