A linearly polarized photon can be quantized from the Lorentz-boosted electromagnetic field of a nucleus traveling at ultra-relativistic speed. When two relativistic heavy nuclei pass one another at a distance of a few nuclear radii, the photon from one nucleus may interact through a virtual quark-antiquark pair with gluons from the other nucleus forming a short-lived vector meson (e.g. ${\rho^0}$). In this experiment, the polarization was utilized in diffractive photoproduction to observe a unique spin interference pattern in the angular distribution of ${\rho^0\rightarrow\pi^+\pi^-}$ decays. The observed interference is a result of an overlap of two wave functions at a distance an order of magnitude larger than the ${\rho^0}$ travel distance within its lifetime. The strong-interaction nuclear radii were extracted from these diffractive interactions, and found to be $6.53\pm 0.06$ fm ($^{197} {\rm Au }$) and $7.29\pm 0.08$ fm ($^{238} {\rm U}$), larger than the nuclear charge radii. The observable is demonstrated to be sensitive to the nuclear geometry and quantum interference of non-identical particles.
Using 1.8 fb-1 of pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider, we present measurements of the production cross sections of Upsilon(1S,2S,3S) mesons. Upsilon mesons are reconstructed using the di-muon decay mode. Total production cross sections for p_T<70 GeV and in the rapidity interval |Upsilon|<2.25 are measured to be 8.01+-0.02+-0.36+-0.31 nb, 2.05+-0.01+-0.12+-0.08 nb, 0.92+-0.01+-0.07+-0.04 nb respectively, with uncertainties separated into statistical, systematic, and luminosity measurement effects. In addition, differential cross section times di-muon branching fractions for Upsilon(1S), Upsilon(2S), and Upsilon(3S) as a function of Upsilon transverse momentum p_T and rapidity are presented. These cross sections are obtained assuming unpolarized production. If the production polarization is fully transverse or longitudinal with no azimuthal dependence in the helicity frame the cross section may vary by approximately +-20%. If a non-trivial azimuthal dependence is considered, integrated cross sections may be significantly enhanced by a factor of two or more. We compare our results to several theoretical models of Upsilon meson production, finding that none provide an accurate description of our data over the full range of Upsilon transverse momenta accessible with this dataset.
Azimuthal decorrelations between the two central jets with the largest transverse momenta are sensitive to the dynamics of events with multiple jets. We present a measurement of the normalized differential cross section based on the full dataset (L=36/pb) acquired by the ATLAS detector during the 2010 sqrt(s)=7 TeV proton-proton run of the LHC. The measured distributions include jets with transverse momenta up to 1.3 TeV, probing perturbative QCD in a high energy regime.
We present the first inclusive measurements of the invariant and SoftDrop jet mass in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV at STAR. The measurements are fully corrected for detector effects, and reported differentially in both the jet transverse momentum and jet radius parameter. We compare the measurements to established leading-order Monte Carlo event generators and find that STAR-tuned PYTHIA-6 reproduces the data, while LHC tunes of PYTHIA-8 and HERWIG-7 do not agree with the data, providing further constraints on parameter tuning. Finally, we observe that SoftDrop grooming, for which the contribution of wide-angle non-perturbative radiation is suppressed, shifts the jet mass distributions into closer agreement with the partonic jet mass as determined by both PYTHIA-8 and a next-to-leading-logarithmic accuracy perturbative QCD calculation. These measurements complement recent LHC measurements in a different kinematic region, as well as establish a baseline for future jet mass measurements in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC.
The prompt and non-prompt production cross-sections for the chi_c1 and chi_c2 charmonium states are measured in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using 4.5 fb^-1 of integrated luminosity. The chi_c states are reconstructed through the radiative decay chi_c -> J/psi gamma (with J/psi -> mu+mu-) where photons are reconstructed from gamma -> e+e- conversions. The production rate of the chi_c2 state relative to the chi_c1 state is measured for prompt and non-prompt chi_c as a function of J/psi transverse momentum. The prompt chi_c cross-sections are combined with existing measurements of prompt J/psi production to derive the fraction of prompt J/psi produced in feed-down from chi_c decays. The fractions of chi_c1 and chi_c2 produced in b-hadron decays are also measured.
This Letter presents a search for magnetic monopoles with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider using an integrated luminosity of 2.0 fb^-1 of pp collisions recorded at a center-of-mass energy of sqrt(s)=7 TeV. No event is found in the signal region, leading to an upper limit on the production cross section at 95% confidence level of 1.6/epsilon fb for Dirac magnetic monopoles with the minimum unit magnetic charge and with mass between 200 GeV and 1500 GeV, where epsilon is the monopole reconstruction efficiency. The efficiency epsilon is high and uniform in the fiducial region given by pseudorapidity |eta|<1.37 and transverse kinetic energy 600-700<E^kin sin(theta)<1400 GeV. The minimum value of 700 GeV is for monopoles of mass 200 GeV, whereas the minimum value of 600 GeV is applicable for higher mass monopoles. Therefore, the upper limit on the production cross section at 95% confidence level is 2 fb in this fiducial region. Assuming the kinematic distributions from Drell-Yan pair production of spin-1/2 Dirac magnetic monopoles, the efficiency is in the range 1%-10%, leading to an upper limit on the cross section at 95% confidence level that varies from 145 fb to 16 fb for monopoles with mass between 200 GeV and 1200 GeV. This limit is weaker than the fiducial limit because most of these monopoles lie outside the fiducial region.
A study of WZ production in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV is presented using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 fb^-1 collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2011. In total, 317 candidates, with a background expectation of 68+/-10 events, are observed in double-leptonic decay final states with electrons, muons and missing transverse momentum. The total cross-section is determined to be sigma_WZ(tot) = 19.0+1.4/-1.3(stat.)+/-0.9(syst.)+/-0.4(lumi.) pb, consistent with the Standard Model expectation of 17.6+1.1/-1.0 pb. Limits on anomalous triple gauge boson couplings are derived using the transverse momentum spectrum of Z bosons in the selected events. The cross section is also presented as a function of Z boson transverse momentum and diboson invariant mass.
A measurement of event-plane correlations involving two or three event planes of different order is presented as a function of centrality for 7 ub-1 Pb+Pb collision data at sqrt(s_NN)=2.76 TeV, recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. Fourteen correlators are measured using a standard event-plane method and a scalar-product method, and the latter method is found to give a systematically larger correlation signal. Several different trends in the centrality dependence of these correlators are observed. These trends are not reproduced by predictions based on the Glauber model, which includes only the correlations from the collision geometry in the initial state. Calculations that include the final-state collective dynamics are able to describe qualitatively, and in some cases also quantitatively, the centrality dependence of the measured correlators. These observations suggest that both the fluctuations in the initial geometry and non-linear mixing between different harmonics in the final state are important for creating these correlations in momentum space.
We present a measurement of two-particle angular correlations in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV. The collision events were collected during 2009 and 2010 with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider using a single-arm minimum bias trigger. Correlations are measured for charged particles produced in the kinematic range of transverse momentum pT > 100 MeV and pseudorapidity |eta| < 2.5. A complex structure in pseudorapidity and azimuth is observed at both collision energies. Results are compared to Pythia 8 and Herwig++ as well as to the AMBT2B, DW and Perugia 2011 tunes of Pythia 6. The data are not satisfactorily described by any of these models.
Pseudorapidity gap distributions in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV are studied using a minimum bias data sample with an integrated luminosity of 7.1 inverse microbarns. Cross sections are measured differentially in terms of Delta eta F, the larger of the pseudorapidity regions extending to the limits of the ATLAS sensitivity, at eta = +/- 4.9, in which no final state particles are produced above a transverse momentum threshold p_T Cut. The measurements span the region 0 < Delta eta F < 8 for 200 < p_T Cut < 800 MeV. At small Delta eta F, the data test the reliability of hadronisation models in describing rapidity and transverse momentum fluctuations in final state particle production. The measurements at larger gap sizes are dominated by contributions from the single diffractive dissociation process (pp -> Xp), enhanced by double dissociation (pp -> XY) where the invariant mass of the lighter of the two dissociation systems satisfies M_Y <~ 7 GeV. The resulting cross section is d sigma / d Delta eta F ~ 1 mb for Delta eta F >~ 3. The large rapidity gap data are used to constrain the value of the pomeron intercept appropriate to triple Regge models of soft diffraction. The cross section integrated over all gap sizes is compared with other LHC inelastic cross section measurements.
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