Constraining hot and cold nuclear matter properties from heavy-ion collisions and deep-inelastic scattering

A bstract We perform a global analysis of deep-inelastic e + p scattering data from HERA and transverse energy distributions in p + p and p + Pb collisions, alongside charged hadron multiplicities in Pb+Pb collisions at $$ \sqrt{s_{\textrm{NN}}}=5.02 $$ s NN = 5.02 TeV from ALICE. Using a saturation-based initial state model grounded in high-energy QCD, we determine the early-time non-equilibrium shear viscosity to entropy density ratio η/s of the quark-gluon plasma. Our results provide new insights into the early-time transport properties of nuclear matter under extreme conditions.