A unified description of small, peripheral, and large system suppression data from pQCD

We present quantitative predictions for the nuclear modification factor in both small and peripheral systems from a pQCD-based energy loss model that is constrained by light- and heavy-flavor suppression data from central heavy-ion collisions. We find nearly identical suppression for central $p\mathrm{/}d+A$ collisions as for peripheral $A+A$ collisions, quantitatively consistent with the measured 20% suppression of neutral pions produced in $d+\mathrm{A}\mathrm{u}$ collisions by PHENIX, but dramatically inconsistent with the measured 20% enhancement of charged hadrons produced in $p+\mathrm{P}\mathrm{b}$ collisions by ATLAS. We demonstrate that this equivalence of central small system suppression and peripheral large system suppression is insensitive to the underlying energy loss model.