Machine learning study to identify collective flow in small and large colliding systems

Abstract

Collective flow has been found to be similar between small colliding systems ($p$ $+$ $p$ and $p$ $+$ A collisions) and large colliding systems (peripheral A $+$ A collisions) at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. In order to study the differences of collective flow between small and large colliding systems, we employ a point cloud network to identify $p$ $+$ Pb collisions and peripheral Pb $+$ Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} =$ 5.02 TeV generated from a multiphase transport model (AMPT). After removing the discrepancies in the pseudorapidity distribution and the $p_{\rm T}$ spectra, we capture the discrepancy in collective flow. Although the verification accuracy of our PCN is limited due to similar event-by-event distributions of elliptic and triangular flow, we demonstrate that collective flow between $p$ $+$ Pb collisions and peripheral Pb $+$ Pb collisions becomes more distinct with increasing final hadron multiplicity and parton scattering cross section. This study not only highlights the potential of PCN techniques in advancing the understanding of collective flow in varying colliding systems, but more importantly lays the groundwork for the future PCN-related research.