Glauber Model Monte Carlo Simulations of Pb+Pb and p+Pb Collisions at 5.02 TeV

The Glauber Model is widely used in relativistic heavy ion physics to calculate basic quantities such as impact parameter, number of participating nucleons, and the number of collisions, which are related to the geometry of the colliding nuclei. The Woods-Saxon probability density function is used to model the locations of the nucleons within the two nuclei and a Monte Carlo method is used to generate a random distribution of impact parameters. In order to use these calculations to determine the collision centrality for Pb+Pb and p+Pb collisions, a negative binomial distribution is used to relate particle production and transverse energy measurements to the number of nucleon-nucleon collisions. Comparing the measured distribution of transverse energy to the predictions from the Glauber Monte Carlo allows the centrality classes to be defined and the trigger efficiencies for peripheral events to be determined. This project will allow the study of quarkonia production from small nuclear systems up to the most central heavy-ion collisions in order to disentangle cold nuclear matter effects from those related to the color deconfined Quark-Gluon Plasma.