Probing Nuclear Structure of Heavy Ions at the Large Hadron Collider

We perform high-statistics simulations to study the impacts of nuclear structure on the ratios of anisotropic flow observables in ${}^{208}$Pb+${}^{208}$Pb and ${}^{129}$Xe+${}^{129}$Xe collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. Even with $40\mathrm{\%}$ difference in atomic numbers between ${}^{208}$Pb and ${}^{129}$Xe nuclei, the ratios of anisotropic flow in the same centrality class between the two collision systems are strongly affected by the nuclear structure inputs in the initial state. The ratios of $v_2\{4\}\mathrm{/}{v}_2\{2\}$ in these collisions are sensitive to the nuclear skin thickness of the colliding nuclei, providing indirect constraints on the nuclei’s neutron skin. Our model predictions serve as a benchmark to compare with experimental measurements.