Measurement of Strange Baryon–Antibaryon Interactions with Femtoscopic Correlations
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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Recent Work Title Measurement of strange baryon–antibaryon interactions with femtoscopic correlations Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9m53h9jm Authors Acharya, S Adamová, D Adhya, SP et al. Publication Date 2020-03-10 DOI 10.1016/j.physletb.2020.135223 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Physics Letters B 802 (2020) 135223 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Physics Letters B www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb Measurement of strange baryon–antibaryon interactions with femtoscopic correlations .ALICE Collaboration a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: √Two-particle correlation√ functions were measured for pp, p, p, and pairs in Pb–Pb collisions at Received 25 September 2019 sNN = 2.76 TeV and sNN = 5.02 TeV recorded by the ALICE detector. From a simultaneous fit to all Received in revised form 10 January 2020 obtained correlation functions, real and imaginary components of the scattering lengths, as well as the Accepted 13 January 2020 effective ranges, were extracted for combined p and p pairs and, for the first time, for pairs. Available online 16 January 2020 Effective averaged scattering parameters for heavier baryon–antibaryon pairs, not measured directly, are Editor: L. Rolandi also provided. The results reveal similarly strong interaction between measured baryon–antibaryon pairs, ∗ suggesting that they all annihilate in the same manner at the same pair relative momentum k . Moreover, the reported significant non-zero imaginary part and negative real part of the scattering length provide motivation for future baryon–antibaryon bound state searches. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP3. √ 1. Introduction sNN = 200 GeV has been performed by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and found that the pp interac- The interaction of baryons is a fundamental aspect of many tion does not differ from the pp system [26]. Also, correlation√ mea- = sub-fields of nuclear physics. It is investigated extensively with surements of baryon–baryon√ pairs in pp collisions at s 7TeV numerous methods, among which are included the detailed anal- and p–Pb collisions at sNN = 5.02 TeV performed by the ALICE ysis of the properties of atomic nuclei, the dedicated experiments detector [27]at the LHC provide more constraints on the interac- − where beams of one baryon type are scattered on other baryons tion of p and [28,29]as well as p [30]at low relative bound in atomic nuclei [1–6], and the femtoscopy technique [7]. pair momentum. The latter involves the analysis of momentum correlations of two Concerning proton–antiproton pairs, the strong interaction was particles produced in nuclear or elementary collisions [8–12]. It is studied in detail [31–35]. Of particular interest is protonium (or especially interesting to probe the interaction in the region of the antiprotonic hydrogen) – a proton–antiproton Coulomb bound state, low relative momentum of the pair, as it is the most relevant for where the strong interaction also plays a significant role. The pro- a precise extraction of the strong interaction scattering parame- tonium atoms are created by stopping antiprotons in hydrogen and ters. In particular, the possible creation of bound states for a given the strong interaction is studied via shifts in the X-ray spectrum baryon–baryon pair was investigated extensively [13–18]. from the expected QED transitions from excited states. In partic- Nuclear collisions at relativistic energies are abundant sources ular, there is evidence of a contribution from the strong force to of various particle species. In particular, the number of baryons the 1S and 2P states. However, the nature of protonium in these and antibaryons created in each central Pb–Pb collision at the states, whether it can be considered a nuclear bound state or a Large Hadron Collider (LHC) [19]is of the order of one hundred result of the Coulomb interaction, remains an open question. For each at mid-rapidity (|y| < 0.5) [20–22], which makes it feasible more details we refer the reader to the review paper [35]. to study details of their interactions. These particles include , , For baryon–antibaryon pairs with non-zero strangeness there , and and an approximately equal amount of their correspond- is much less experimental data available. However, low mass en- ing antiparticles. The interactions of baryons are well known for pp pairs hancements in the invariant mass distributions of pp, p, and and pn pairs. Measurements were also performed for p pairs pairs have been observed in charmonium and Bmeson de- [23–25]. Recently, a comparative study of the baryon–baryon cays [36–39]. Those enhancements, except for the pppair, are slightly above the mass threshold of the baryon–antibaryon sys- and antibaryon–antibaryon interaction using Au–Au collisions at 2 tems and have widths which are below 200 MeV/c . Theoreti- cal interpretations of these results predict the existence of vari- E-mail address: alice -publications @cern .ch. ous baryon–antibaryon bound states and propose their classifica- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2020.135223 0370-2693/© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP3. 2 ALICE Collaboration / Physics Letters B 802 (2020) 135223 tion [36]. Results presented in this letter might shed new light on Table 1 Centrality ranges and corresponding average charged-particle multiplicity den- this domain. √ sities at mid-rapidity dNch/dη for Pb–Pb collisions at sNN = 2.76 TeV [50] The baryon–antibaryon scattering parameters, when measured, √ and sNN = 5.02 TeV [52]. could be implemented in the well-established model of heavy- √ √ Centrality dN /dη s = 2.76 TeV dN /dη s = 5.02 TeV ion collisions, UrQMD [40], which has the important feature of ch NN ch NN ± ± including rescattering in the hadronic phase. In particular, recent 0–5% 1601 60 1943 53 5–10% 1294 ± 49 1586 ± 46 comparisons of theoretical calculations with the ALICE data show 10–20% 966 ± 37 1180 ± 31 that a proper description of this phase is critical for the correct re- 20–30% 649 ± 23 786 ± 20 production of a large number of observables, like particle yields, 30–40% 426 ± 15 512 ± 15 ± ± transverse-momentum spectra, femtoscopy of identified particles, 40–50% 261 9 318 12 as well as elliptic flow [41–44]. The baryon–antibaryon annihila- tion is a critical component of the rescattering process. Yet, at the 1 moment, for all but nucleon-antinucleon pairs, one has to rely on point and cover pseudorapidity ranges 2.8 < η < 5.1(V0A) and − − assumptions about the interaction cross section. Currently it is as- 3.7 < η < 1.7(V0C). The MB trigger required a signal in both V0 detectors within a time window that is consistent with the sumed that all baryon–antibaryon pairs annihilate√ in the same way as pppairs at the same total energy of the pair, s, in the pair rest collision occurring at the centre of the ALICE detector. The event frame [40]. centrality was determined by analysing the amplitude of the sig- Femtoscopy allows one to access the baryon–antibaryon inter- nal from the V0 detector with the procedure described in details action at low pair relative momentum in a way which is com- in Ref. [50]. plementary to dedicated scattering experiments. Only the strong The position of the collision vertex was reconstructed using interaction is present for p (p) and pairs, while for pp the signal from the Inner Tracking System (ITS) [27]. The ITS is pairs, where also the Coulomb interaction is present, it is the composed of six cylindrical layers of silicon detectors and covers | | dominant contribution [7,45]. Therefore, the parameters of this in- η < 0.9. Its information can be used for tracking and primary teraction, together with the source function, determine the shape vertex determination. However, in this analysis it was used only of the correlation function. In addition, the so-called “residual cor- for the latter. The primary vertex for an event was required to be ± relation” effect (presence of an admixture of weak decay products within 8cm from the centre of the detector. in the sample of a given baryon–antibaryon pair) results in non- The analysis was performed in six centrality [51] ranges for trivial interconnections between measured correlation functions. both collision energies. They are listed in Table 1 together with The femtoscopic technique has been employed already to measure their corresponding average charged-particle multiplicity densities p and p scattering parameters by the STAR experiment [46]. at mid-rapidity dNch/dη [50,52]. However, the most important limitation of that study is the fact Charged-particle trajectory (track) reconstruction for both colli- that no corrections for residual correlations were applied. sion energies was performed using the Time Projection Chamber In this letter the scattering parameters are extracted for p, (TPC) detector [53]. The TPC is divided by the central electrode into two halves. Each half is capped with a readout plane which p, and for the first time for pairs from√ femtoscopic cor- = is composed of 18 sectors (covering the full azimuthal angle ϕ) √relations measured in Pb–Pb collisions at sNN 2.76 TeV and with 159 padrows placed radially in each sector. A track signal in sNN = 5.02 TeV registered by the ALICE experiment at LHC. The the TPC consists of space points (clusters), and each of them is residual correlations are accounted for in the formalism proposed reconstructed in one of the padrows.