Measurement of e^{+}e^{-} Momentum and Angular Distributions from Linearly Polarized Photon Collisions. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • The Breit-Wheeler process which produces matter and antimatter from photon collisions is experimentally investigated through the observation of 6085 exclusive electron-positron pairs in ultraperipheral Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200GeV. The measurements reveal a large fourth-order angular modulation of cos4=(16.82.5)% and smooth invariant mass distribution absent of vector mesons (, , and ) at the experimental limit of 0.2% of the observed yields. The differential cross section as a function of e^{+}e^{-} pair transverse momentum P_{} peaks at low value with sqrt[P_{}^{2}]=38.10.9MeV and displays a significant centrality dependence. These features are consistent with QED calculations for the collision of linearly polarized photons quantized from the extremely strong electromagnetic fields generated by the highly charged Au nuclei at ultrarelativistic speed. The experimental results have implications for vacuum birefringence and for mapping the magnetic field which is important for emergent QCD phenomena.

published proceedings

  • Phys Rev Lett

altmetric score

  • 556.646

author list (cited authors)

  • Adam, J., Adamczyk, L., Adams, J. R., Adkins, J. K., Agakishiev, G., Aggarwal, M. M., ... STAR Collaboration.

citation count

  • 49

complete list of authors

  • Adam, J||Adamczyk, L||Adams, JR||Adkins, JK||Agakishiev, G||Aggarwal, MM||Ahammed, Z||Alekseev, I||Anderson, DM||Aparin, A||Aschenauer, EC||Ashraf, MU||Atetalla, FG||Attri, A||Averichev, GS||Bairathi, V||Barish, K||Behera, A||Bellwied, R||Bhasin, A||Bielcik, J||Bielcikova, J||Bland, LC||Bordyuzhin, IG||Brandenburg, JD||Brandin, AV||Butterworth, J||Caines, H||Calderón de la Barca Sánchez, M||Cebra, D||Chakaberia, I||Chaloupka, P||Chan, BK||Chang, F-H||Chang, Z||Chankova-Bunzarova, N||Chatterjee, A||Chen, D||Chen, JH||Chen, X||Chen, Z||Cheng, J||Cherney, M||Chevalier, M||Choudhury, S||Christie, W||Crawford, HJ||Csanád, M||Daugherity, M||Dedovich, TG||Deppner, IM||Derevschikov, AA||Didenko, L||Dong, X||Drachenberg, JL||Dunlop, JC||Edmonds, T||Elsey, N||Engelage, J||Eppley, G||Esha, R||Esumi, S||Evdokimov, O||Ewigleben, A||Eyser, O||Fatemi, R||Fazio, S||Federic, P||Fedorisin, J||Feng, CJ||Feng, Y||Filip, P||Finch, E||Fisyak, Y||Francisco, A||Fulek, L||Gagliardi, CA||Galatyuk, T||Geurts, F||Gibson, A||Gopal, K||Grosnick, D||Hamad, AI||Hamed, A||Harris, JW||He, S||He, W||He, X||Heppelmann, S||Heppelmann, S||Herrmann, N||Hoffman, E||Holub, L||Hong, Y||Horvat, S||Hu, Y||Huang, HZ||Huang, SL||Huang, T||Huang, X||Humanic, TJ||Huo, P||Igo, G||Isenhower, D||Jacobs, WW||Jena, C||Jentsch, A||Ji, Y||Jia, J||Jiang, K||Jowzaee, S||Ju, X||Judd, EG||Kabana, S||Kabir, ML||Kagamaster, S||Kalinkin, D||Kang, K||Kapukchyan, D||Kauder, K||Ke, HW||Keane, D||Kechechyan, A||Kelsey, M||Khyzhniak, YV||Kikoła, DP||Kim, C||Kimelman, B||Kincses, D||Kinghorn, TA||Kisel, I||Kiselev, A||Kisiel, A||Klein, SR||Kocan, M||Kochenda, L||Kosarzewski, LK||Kramarik, L||Kravtsov, P||Krueger, K||Kulathunga Mudiyanselage, N||Kumar, L||Kunnawalkam Elayavalli, R||Kwasizur, JH||Lacey, R||Lan, S||Landgraf, JM||Lauret, J||Lebedev, A||Lednicky, R||Lee, JH||Leung, YH||Li, C||Li, W||Li, W||Li, X||Li, Y||Liang, Y||Licenik, R||Lin, T||Lin, Y||Lisa, MA||Liu, F||Liu, H||Liu, P||Liu, P||Liu, T||Liu, X||Liu, Y||Liu, Z||Ljubicic, T||Llope, WJ||Longacre, RS||Lukow, NS||Luo, S||Luo, X||Ma, GL||Ma, L||Ma, R||Ma, YG||Magdy, N||Majka, R||Mallick, D||Margetis, S||Markert, C||Matis, HS||Mazer, JA||Minaev, NG||Mioduszewski, S||Mohanty, B||Mooney, I||Moravcova, Z||Morozov, DA||Nagy, M||Nam, JD||Nasim, Md||Nayak, K||Neff, D||Nelson, JM||Nemes, DB||Nie, M||Nigmatkulov, G||Niida, T||Nogach, LV||Nonaka, T||Odyniec, G||Ogawa, A||Oh, S||Okorokov, VA||Page, BS||Pak, R||Pandav, A||Panebratsev, Y||Pawlik, B||Pawlowska, D||Pei, H||Perkins, C||Pinsky, L||Pintér, RL||Pluta, J||Porter, J||Posik, M||Pruthi, NK||Przybycien, M||Putschke, J||Qiu, H||Quintero, A||Radhakrishnan, SK||Ramachandran, S||Ray, RL||Reed, R||Ritter, HG||Roberts, JB||Rogachevskiy, OV||Romero, JL||Ruan, L||Rusnak, J||Sahoo, NR||Sako, H||Salur, S||Sandweiss, J||Sato, S||Schmidke, WB||Schmitz, N||Schweid, BR||Seck, F||Seger, J||Sergeeva, M||Seto, R||Seyboth, P||Shah, N||Shahaliev, E||Shanmuganathan, PV||Shao, M||Shen, F||Shen, WQ||Shi, SS||Shou, QY||Sichtermann, EP||Sikora, R||Simko, M||Singh, J||Singha, S||Smirnov, N||Solyst, W||Sorensen, P||Spinka, HM||Srivastava, B||Stanislaus, TDS||Stefaniak, M||Stewart, DJ||Strikhanov, M||Stringfellow, B||Suaide, AAP||Sumbera, M||Summa, B||Sun, XM||Sun, Y||Sun, Y||Surrow, B||Svirida, DN||Szymanski, P||Tang, AH||Tang, Z||Taranenko, A||Tarnowsky, T||Thomas, JH||Timmins, AR||Tlusty, D||Tokarev, M||Tomkiel, CA||Trentalange, S||Tribble, RE||Tribedy, P||Tripathy, SK||Tsai, OD||Tu, Z||Ullrich, T||Underwood, DG||Upsal, I||Van Buren, G||Vanek, J||Vasiliev, AN||Vassiliev, I||Videbæk, F||Vokal, S||Voloshin, SA||Wang, F||Wang, G||Wang, JS||Wang, P||Wang, Y||Wang, Y||Wang, Z||Webb, JC||Weidenkaff, PC||Wen, L||Westfall, GD||Wieman, H||Wissink, SW||Witt, R||Wu, Y||Xiao, ZG||Xie, G||Xie, W||Xu, H||Xu, N||Xu, QH||Xu, YF||Xu, Y||Xu, Z||Xu, Z||Yang, C||Yang, Q||Yang, S||Yang, Y||Yang, Z||Ye, Z||Ye, Z||Yi, L||Yip, K||Zbroszczyk, H||Zha, W||Zhang, D||Zhang, S||Zhang, S||Zhang, XP||Zhang, Y||Zhang, Y||Zhang, ZJ||Zhang, Z||Zhao, J||Zhong, C||Zhou, C||Zhu, X||Zhu, Z||Zurek, M||Zyzak, M

publication date

  • July 2021