A new quantum chromodynamics (QCD) analysis has allowed the extraction of pion nuclear fragmentation functions (nFFs), which describe how hadronization is modified in high-energy nuclear collisions. This study, which simultaneously considers vacuum fragmentation functions and their nuclear modifications, is crucial for understanding the fundamental processes by which quarks and gluons transform into composite particles (hadrons) within a nuclear environment.

Nuclear effects have been parameterized as functions of the nuclear mass number ($A$), the energy of the fragmenting parton in the target rest frame ($\nu$), and the hadron energy fraction ($z$). This parameterization has allowed the quantification of the dependence of these effects on these variables. The analysis incorporated semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering data on nuclear targets, applying specific kinematic cuts to ensure the applicability of perturbative QCD and collinear factorization. The resulting fit provides a good description of most datasets, with nFFs well constrained in the energy fraction range $z \in [0.2, 0.7]$.

With these new nuclear fragmentation functions, next-to-leading order (NLO) predictions have been made for proton-proton ($pp$) and proton-nucleus ($pA$) collisions. These predictions show reasonable agreement with experimental data from the ALICE experiment, within current experimental uncertainties. This advance is significant for high-energy physics, as it provides a more precise tool for interpreting results from accelerator experiments like the LHC, where the properties of matter under extreme conditions are studied.