Collective effects in O-O and Ne-Ne collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$=5.36 TeV from a hybrid approach (2509.05613v1)

Abstract: Many features of heavy-ion collisions are well described by hybrid approaches, where the droplet of strongly coupled quark gluon plasma (QGP) is modeled by hydrodynamics and the subsequent dilute stage is performed with a hadronic transport model. Conventionally, the formation of a QGP is well established in larger collision systems like Lead and Gold. However, hints of collectivity were found even in proton-proton collisions, raising the question where the onset of QGP formation lays. This study aims at making predictions for the light ions run at the LHC in July 2025, in order to explore the applicability of hybrid approaches in smaller collision systems. We employ three different models, the SMASH-vHLLE-hybrid, the pure hadronic cascade of SMASH and Angantyr to simulate O-O collisions at a center of mass energy of $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$=5.36 TeV. This setup allows us to compare evolutions with and without a hydrodynamic description on an equal basis, while Angantyr serves as a baseline for no collective effects.