Effects of nuclear structure and quantum interference on diffractive vector meson production in ultraperipheral nuclear collisions

Heikki Mäntysaari, Farid Salazar, Björn Schenke, Chun Shen, and Wenbin Zhao

Phys. Rev. C 109, 024908 – Published 12 February 2024

Abstract

We study diffractive vector meson production in ultraperipheral collisions of heavy nuclei, utilizing a theoretical framework based on the color glass condensate formalism. We focus on $Au + Au, U + U, Ru + Ru, Zr + Zr$ , and $Pb + Pb$ collisions, examining the transverse momentum dependence of vector meson production cross-sections and $\cos (2 Δ Φ)$ asymmetries in the decay product distributions to explore the role of nuclear geometry. The angular modulation is due to the linear polarization of the incoming photons and quantum interference effects. We extract nuclear radii and find them to be consistent with experimental data from the STAR collaboration. The amplitudes of the $\cos (2 Δ Φ)$ modulation in the cross-section and the extracted radii depend on the nuclear geometry. This dependence is dominated by the geometry-dependent variation of the minimum impact parameter required for ultraperipheral collisions.

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Received 1 November 2023
Accepted 4 January 2024

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.109.024908

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Electron-ion collisions Photon, lepton & quark production Photonuclear reactions Quark-gluon plasma Relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Nuclear Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Heikki Mäntysaari ^1,2, Farid Salazar ^3,4,5,6, Björn Schenke⁷, Chun Shen ^8,9, and Wenbin Zhao ^8,3,4

¹Department of Physics, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, 40014 University of Jyväskylä, Finland
²Helsinki Institute of Physics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 64, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
³Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
⁴Physics Department, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
⁵Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
⁶Mani L. Bhaumik Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
⁷Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA
⁸Department of Physics and Astronomy, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48201, USA
⁹RIKEN BNL Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA

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Issue

Vol. 109, Iss. 2 — February 2024

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Physical Review C

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