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Evidence of isospin-symmetry violation in high-energy collisions of atomic nuclei

The NA61/SHINE collaboration Adhikary, H. ; Adrich, P. ; Allison, K.K. ; et al.
Nature Commun. 16 (2025) 2849, 2025.
Inspire Record 2734683 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.156978

Strong interactions preserve an approximate isospin symmetry between up ($u$) and down ($d$) quarks, part of the more general flavor symmetry. In the case of $K$ meson production, if this isospin symmetry were exact, it would result in equal numbers of charged ($K^+$ and $K^-$) and neutral ($K^0$ and $\overline K^{\,0}$) mesons in the final state. Here, we report results on the relative abundance of charged over neutral $K$ meson production in argon and scandium nuclei collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 11.9 GeV per nucleon pair. We find that the production of $K^+$ and $K^-$ mesons at mid-rapidity is $(18.4\pm 6.1)\%$ higher than that of the neutral $K$ mesons. Although with large uncertainties, earlier data on nucleus-nucleus collisions in the collision center-of-mass energy range $2.6 < \sqrt{s_{NN}} < 200$~\GeV are consistent with the present result. Using well-established models for hadron production, we demonstrate that known isospin-symmetry breaking effects and the initial nuclei containing more neutrons than protons lead only to a small (few percent) deviation of the charged-to-neutral kaon ratio from unity at high energies. Thus, they cannot explain the measurements. The significance of the flavor-symmetry violation beyond the known effects is 4.7$\sigma$ when the compilation of world data with uncertainties quoted by the experiments is used. New systematic, high-precision measurements and theoretical efforts are needed to establish the origin of the observed large isospin-symmetry breaking.

11 data tables

Numerical data for $K^0_S$ from Figure 1.

Numerical data for $K^0_S$ from Figure 1.

Numerical data for $(K^+ + K^-)/2$ from Figure 1.

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Measurements of $\pi^\pm$, $K^\pm$, $p$ and $\bar{p}$ spectra in $^{40}$Ar+$^{45}$Sc collisions at 13$A$ to 150$A$ GeV/$c$

The NA61/SHINE collaboration Adhikary, H. ; Adrich, P. ; Allison, K.K. ; et al.
Eur.Phys.J.C 84 (2024) 416, 2024.
Inspire Record 2692441 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.151277

The NA61/SHINE experiment at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron studies the onset of deconfinement in strongly interacting matter through a beam energy scan of particle production in collisions of nuclei of varied sizes. This paper presents results on inclusive double-differential spectra, transverse momentum and rapidity distributions and mean multiplicities of $\pi^\pm$, $K^\pm$, $p$ and $\bar{p}$ produced in $^{40}$Ar+$^{45}$Sc collisions at beam momenta of 13$A$, 19$A$, 30$A$, 40$A$, 75$A$ and 150$A$~\GeVc. The analysis uses the 10% most central collisions, where the observed forward energy defines centrality. The energy dependence of the $K^\pm$/$\pi^\pm$ ratios as well as of inverse slope parameters of the $K^\pm$ transverse mass distributions are placed in between those found in inelastic $p$+$p$ and central Pb+Pb collisions. The results obtained here establish a system-size dependence of hadron production properties that so far cannot be explained either within statistical or dynamical models.

139 data tables

Two-dimensional distributions ($y$ vs. $p_T$ ) of double differential yields of $p$ at 13$A$ GeV/c

Two-dimensional distributions ($y$ vs. $p_T$ ) of double differential yields of $\pi^+$ at 13$A$ GeV/c

Two-dimensional distributions ($y$ vs. $p_T$ ) of double differential yields of $\pi^-$ at 13$A$ GeV/c

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