Abstract
The STAR Collaboration reports on the photoproduction of π+π− pairs in gold-gold collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV/nucleon-pair. These pion pairs are produced when a nearly real photon emitted by one ion scatters from the other ion.
We fit the π+π− invariant-mass spectrum with a combination of ρ0 and ω resonances and a direct π+π− continuum. This is the first observation of the ω in ultraperipheral collisions, and the first measurement of ρ−ω interference at energies where photoproduction is dominated by Pomeron exchange. The ω amplitude is consistent with the measured γp → ωp cross section, a classical Glauber calculation, and the ω → π+π− branching ratio. The ω phase angle is similar to that observed at much lower energies, showing that the ρ−ω phase difference does not depend significantly on photon energy.
The ρ0 differential cross section dσ/dt exhibits a clear diffraction pattern, compatible with scattering from a gold nucleus, with two minima visible. The positions of the diffractive minima agree better with the predictions of a quantum Glauber calculation that does not include nuclear shadowing than with a calculation that does include shadowing.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-13-2017
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.96.054904
Funding Information
We thank the RHIC Operations Group and RCF at BNL, the NERSC Center at LBNL, and the Open Science Grid consortium for providing resources and support. This work was supported in part by the Office of Nuclear Physics within the U.S. DOE Office of Science, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Science, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Chinese Ministry of Education, the National Research Foundation of Korea, GA and MSMT of the Czech Republic, Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India; the National Science Centre of Poland, National Research Foundation of Croatia, the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia, RosAtom of Russia and German Bundesministerium fur Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung and Technologie (BMBF), and the Helmholtz Association.
Repository Citation
Adamczyk, L.; Adkins, James K.; Agakishiev, G.; Aggarwal, M. M.; Ahammed, Z.; Ajitanand, N. N.; Alekseev, I.; Anderson, D. M.; Aoyama, R.; Aparin, A.; Arkhipkin, D.; Aschenauer, E. C.; Ashraf, M. U.; Attri, A.; Averichev, G. S.; Bai, X.; Bairathi, V.; Behera, A.; Bellwied, R.; Bhasin, A.; Bhati, A. K.; Bhattarai, P.; Bielcik, J.; Bielcikova, J.; Bland, L. C.; Bordyuzhin, I. G.; Bouchet, J.; Brandenburg, J. D.; Brandin, A. V.; Brown, D.; Fatemi, Renee H.; and Ramachandran, Suvarna, "Coherent Diffractive Photoproduction of ρ0 Mesons on Gold Nuclei at 200 GeV/Nucleon-Pair at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider" (2017). Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications. 509.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/physastron_facpub/509
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Physical Review C, v. 96, issue 5, 054904, p. 1-12.
©2017 American Physical Society
The copyright holder has granted the permission for posting the article here.
Due to the large number of authors, only the first 30 and the authors affiliated with the University of Kentucky are listed in the author section above. For the complete list of authors, please download this article or visit: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.96.054904
The authors of this article are collectively known as STAR Collaboration.