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Title: Search for the tiniest Quark-Gluon "droplet" with the CMS experiment


At extreme energy densities, ordinary matter transitions into Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), a state that is believed to have filled the entire universe shortly after the Big Bang. QGP is a strongly coupled, nearly perfect liquid that interacts and evolves nonperturbatively. In the laboratory, we can create QGP droplets by colliding two beams of heavy ions at nearly the speed of light. One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the QGP production is the observation of the "long-range near-side ridge" in the final state particle distributions,  as it is a strong indication of global collectivity in the created matter.
In 2010, the CMS experiment unexpectedly discovered the ridge phenomenon in high-multiplicity proton-proton (pp) collisions, and later in proton-nucleus (pA) collisions. The presence of "QGP-like" signatures in AA, pA, and pp collisions challenges our understanding of QCD dynamics in its nonperturbative regime, raising a fundamental question: How small can a system be for such collective behavior to emerge? To explore the ultimate limit, CMS conducted correlation measurements in high-multiplicity jets in 13 TeV pp collisions as a proxy of systems initiated by single partons, revealing surprising results. In this talk, I will take you on a journey in search of the tiniest quark-gluon droplet with the CMS experiment at the LHC.

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