Charged particle suppression in Pb+Pb and Xe+Xe collisions measured with the ATLAS detector

The measurement of charge particle production in heavy ion collisions, when compared with pp data, provides insight into the properties of the hot and dense quark-gluon plasma. The ATLAS detector at the LHC recorded 0.49 nb$^{−1}$ of Pb+Pb collisions and 4.2 pb$^{−1}$ of pp collisions, both at the center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=\sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.02$ TeV. Recently, ATLAS also recorded 3 $\mu$b$^{−1}$ of Xe+Xe collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.44$ TeV, which offers a new opportunity to study the system size dependence of the parton energy loss. The large acceptance of the ATLAS detector allows measurements of charged hadron spectra in a wide range of both pseudorapidity and transverse momentum, differentially in collision centrality. The charged hadron spectra measured in Pb+Pb and Xe+Xe collisions are compared to the analogous spectra measured in pp collisions, and the resulting nuclear modification factors $R_{AA}$ are studied.