Quasireal photons exchanged in relativistic heavy ion interactions are powerful probes of the gluonic structure of nuclei. The coherent J/$\psi$ photoproduction cross section in ultraperipheral lead-lead collisions is measured as a function of photon-nucleus center-of-mass energies per nucleon (W$^\text{Pb}_{\gamma\text{N}}$), over a wide range of 40 $\lt$ W$^\text{Pb}_{\gamma\text{N}}$$\lt$ 400 GeV. Results are obtained using data at the nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.52 nb$^{-1}$. The cross section is observed to rise rapidly at low W$^\text{Pb}_{\gamma\text{N}}$, and plateau above W$^\text{Pb}_{\gamma\text{N}}$$\approx$ 40 GeV, up to 400 GeV, a new regime of small Bjorken-$x$ ($\approx$ 6 $\times$ 10$^{-5}$) gluons being probed in a heavy nucleus. The observed energy dependence is not predicted by current quantum chromodynamic models.
Central exclusive and semiexclusive production of $\pi^+\pi^-$ pairs is measured with the CMS detector in proton-proton collisions at the LHC at center-of-mass energies of 5.02 and 13 TeV. The theoretical description of these nonperturbative processes, which have not yet been measured in detail at the LHC, poses a significant challenge to models. The two pions are measured and identified in the CMS silicon tracker based on specific energy loss, whereas the absence of other particles is ensured by calorimeter information. The total and differential cross sections of exclusive and semiexclusive central $\pi^+\pi^-$ production are measured as functions of invariant mass, transverse momentum, and rapidity of the $\pi^+\pi^-$ system in the fiducial region defined as transverse momentum $p_\mathrm{T}(\pi)$ $>$ 0.2 GeV and pseudorapidity $|\eta(\pi)|$ $<$ 2.4. The production cross sections for the four resonant channels f$_0(500)$, $\rho^0(770)$, f$_0(980)$, and f$_2(1270)$ are extracted using a simple model. These results represent the first measurement of this process at the LHC collision energies of 5.02 and 13 TeV.
The production cross sections of the B+, B0, and B0s mesons, and of their charge conjugates, are measured via exclusive hadronic decays in pPb collisions at the center-of-mass energy sqrt(s_NN) = 5.02 TeV with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC. The data set used for this analysis corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 34.6 inverse nanobarns. The production cross sections are measured in the transverse momentum range between 10 and 60 GeV/c. No significant modification is observed compared to proton-proton perturbative QCD calculations scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions. These results provide a baseline for the study of in-medium b quark energy loss in PbPb collisions.
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