Articulo
Evidence for light-by-light scattering in heavy-ion collisions with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
Registro en:
issn:1745-2473
Autor
Alconada Verzini, María Josefina
Alonso, Francisco
Arduh, Francisco Anuar
Dova, María Teresa
Hoya, Joaquín
Monticelli, Fernando Gabriel
Wahlberg, Hernán Pablo
The ATLAS Collaboration
Institución
Resumen
Light-by-light scattering (γγ → γγ) is a quantum-mechanical process that is forbidden in the classical theory of electrodynamics. This reaction is accessible at the Large Hadron Collider thanks to the large electromagnetic field strengths generated by ultra-relativistic colliding lead ions. Using 480 μ 1 of lead-lead collision data recorded at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV by the ATLAS detector, here we report evidence for light-by-light scattering. A total of 13 candidate events were observed with an expected background of 2.6 ± 0.7 events. After background subtraction and analysis corrections, the fiducial cross-section of the process Pb + Pb (γγ) → Pb (∗) + Pb (∗) γγ ,for photon transverse energy E T > 3GeV, photon absolute pseudorapidity |η| <2.4, diphoton invariant mass greater than 6GeV, diphoton transverse momentum lower than 2GeV and diphoton acoplanarity below 0.01, is measured to be 70 ± 24 (stat.) ±17 (syst.) nb, which is in agreement with the standard model predictions. La lista completa de autores que integran el documento puede consultarse en el archivo Instituto de Física La Plata