Probing short-lived fluctuations in hadrons and nuclei

TL;DR

This paper investigates fluctuations in high-energy dipole scattering processes, revealing how differences in fluctuation types affect observable scattering amplitude profiles in hadron and nucleus interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a new analysis framework for fluctuations in dipole scattering, highlighting differences between dilute-dense and dilute-dilute regimes.

Findings

Distinct fluctuation types influence scattering amplitude shapes

Observable differences arise between dipole-nucleus and dipole-dipole scattering

Quantum evolution fluctuations are key to understanding high-energy scattering

Abstract

We develop a picture of dipole-nucleus (namely dilute-dense) and dipole-dipole (dilute-dilute) scattering in the high-energy regime based on the analysis of the fluctuations in the quantum evolution. We emphasize the difference in the nature of the fluctuations probed in these two processes respectively, which, interestingly enough, leads to observable differences in the scattering amplitude profiles.